


The Heartlines on Your Hand

by ofherlionheart



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (but pretend that kate never came back), (see notes for more details), Banshee Lydia Martin, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, M/M, POV Lydia Martin, Rape/Non-con Elements, side sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-07
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 18:58:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1754677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofherlionheart/pseuds/ofherlionheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia glances at Scott. Over the years, he has turned into a surprisingly competent leader. Sometimes, when recalling the asthmatic sixteen year old who regularly tripped over his own feet, Lydia has trouble connecting the two versions of Scott McCall in her head. Yet the klutzy teen managed to turn into an agile werewolf, and, somewhere along the way, got a haircut and a tattoo and a pair of red alpha eyes. Scott is no longer a boy; he is a man, confident and capable, but still able to love and goof around and look like a puppy with a crooked jaw.</p><p>---</p><p>Lydia Martin is a banshee, a goddess, a fearless warrior who eats her inferiors for breakfast. But most importantly, underneath it all, she is simply a human girl. This is a part of her story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heartlines on Your Hand

**Author's Note:**

> IMPORTANT: While there is no rape in this fic, there is a scene in which a character is unwillingly forced to give up their physical autonomy to another character. If this makes you uncomfortable, then don't read it! Either scroll past that section or skip over this fic entirely. 
> 
> Title from "Heartlines" by Florence + the Machine.
> 
> Characters belong to Jeff Davis and the crew at MTV.

_And I’ve seen it in the flights of birds / I’ve seen it in you / The entrails of the animals /The blood running through / But in order to get to the heart / I think sometimes you'll have to cut through_ \- Heartlines, Florence + the Machine

* * *

More often than not, Lydia Martin feels like she is in a dream. No – a nightmare. Sometimes the nightmare is an actual nightmare; sometimes the nightmare is real.

Right now, the nightmare is real.

It is dark, so dark right now, and while Lydia is glad it is not the full moon, she sure as hell is not happy with the new moon, either, because she cannot see a _damn thing_.

The Beacon Hills Preserve is not a place you want to be on a pitch dark night, especially when there is yet another _something_ running around and killing people in town.

Lydia takes a deep breath. No point in panicking; it will not help her. She needs to think calmly, rationally, in order to get out of this.

Think. Which way to the Hale house?

Problem: Lydia does not know.

Lydia does not know because she _woke up_ in the middle of the freaking preserve. She has not done this – _this_ being getting into her car in the middle of the night, driving somewhere, and sleepwalking to some destination – in months. In fact, since Deputy Braden Parrish (another banshee; who would have thought?) taught her how to manage the majority of her newfound capabilities, Lydia’s subconscious has stopped randomly highjacking her body. Lydia had been enjoying the break, especially because she has been busy with college, but –

“Guess that’s come to an end,” Lydia says to herself.

A breeze ripples through the trees, rustling the leaves. Lydia shivers; looking down, she realizes she is only wearing an overlarge long-sleeve shirt. Her subconscious did not even have the decency to put on shoes before it dragged her out to the middle of the woods.

Lydia sighs. Focus – focus on getting to her car, or at least the Hale house.

Lydia decides to pick a direction and start walking. The preserve is not too large; within a few miles in any direction, Lydia reasons, she will reach either a road, the Hale property, or the hearing range of a werewolf.

Hopefully from her pack.

Lydia has been walking for five, maybe ten minutes when she starts feeling it, the heaviness at the back of her head, the buzz in her ears, the itch at the back of her throat. Lydia staggers, hit by the sudden need to turn and head west. Lydia does not know how she knows which direction is west, but suddenly, a forty-five degree turn to the right is west, and Lydia _has to go there_.

Lydia used to try to resist the pull, the invisible string pulling her toward whatever horror her subconscious honed in on. She learned, though, resisting had its cost: pounding headaches that lasted for hours or days; vivid, technicolor nightmares; repeatedly vomiting until she could only hack up spit and bile, her head bent over the porcelain bowl with perspiration beading on her forehead. The pull could not be ignored, and as much as Lydia hated finding the bodies and the blood and the gore, she hated even more the toll that resistance took on her body and mind.

The cold night wind curls around the nape of Lydia’s neck, slicing through the thin cotton fibers of Lydia’s shirt. She walks forward blindly, stumbling on a root and slicing the soles of her feet on sticks and rocks. As Lydia gets closer, the pull in her gut lessens, but then the voices begin to rise.

They start as indistinct murmurs, discontented and dark, but they quickly become clearer. Snatches of sentences whisper in Lydia’s mind, _dark, cold, alone, help, whatisthat, whatisthatthing, helpmehelpme SOMEONEPLEASEHELPME_ –

Lydia trips and yelps as she falls down. She catches herself on her arms and inhales shakily, relieved, until she recognizes the feeling of a warm liquid on her hands. Lydia tilts her head up fractionally. “Please,” she whispers, “Please don’t be a body, please don’t be –”

Blank, glazed green eyes stare at her, and Lydia’s entire body tenses with the need to scream, scream, _scream_ –

So she does.

* * *

“So it’s definitely not werewolves,” Stiles says.

They are in Derek’s loft. It is not the same loft where Boyd died – Derek moved out of that one a couple years ago – but this apartment has already seen plenty of its own supernatural horrors. Isaac nearly bled out in the kitchen a year ago; they exorcised a demon from the Sheriff in the living room; Kira almost killed Danny in the front entrance when she was learning how to use throwing stars. Lydia thinks Derek gave up on finding a normal living space a long time ago. Plus, Stiles helped him get this place, and Lydia is not dumb; she knows Derek has a thing when it comes to Stiles.

At least Peter does not live here.

“Lydia, do you have _any_ idea what it is?” Derek asks.

Lydia purses her lips. “I told you all already, I have no idea. I just found the body … as usual.”

Her voice breaks a little at the end, and Scott gives her a reassuring smile. He then turns to Stiles, asking, “Does the bestiary have anything?”

“The bestiary doesn’t exactly organize creatures by preferred method of killing,” Stiles responds. “Plus, it’s old. It doesn’t have every monster that exists in it.”

“Has anyone called Deaton?” Derek asks.

“He’s in Canada,” Stiles sighs, rubbing the back of his neck, “and therefore not of much use. He doesn’t even pick up his cell, either.”

“Back to square one, then,” Isaac says bitterly.

Lydia crosses her legs. She really did not want to spend her spring break hunting down yet another monster, but she also knows peaceful vacations in Beacon Hills are rather unheard of. Ordinarily, a town with a stable pack does not receive too much supernatural trouble, but between all its other supernatural residents and the lingering magnetism of the Nemeton, Beacon Hills will never truly be peaceful.

At least the pack is strong enough to scare off any challenging werewolf packs.

Lydia glances at Scott. Over the years, he has turned into a surprisingly competent leader. Sometimes, when recalling the asthmatic sixteen year old who regularly tripped over his own feet, Lydia has trouble connecting the two versions of Scott McCall in her head. Yet the klutzy teen managed to turn into an agile werewolf, and, somewhere along the way, got a haircut and a tattoo and a pair of red alpha eyes. Scott is no longer a boy; he is a man, confident and capable, but still able to love and goof around and look like a puppy with a crooked jaw.

“Lydia? Hello? Earth to Miss Martin.”

Lydia blinks out of her reverie. Everyone is staring at her, and she resists the urge to squirm uncomfortably. “What?”

“Did you hear anything, at all?” Isaac asks.

“I _told_ you,” Lydia says, “just the usual panic of a person about to die. ‘It’s dark, what’s going on, what is that, someone please help me.’ Nothing about what the attacker looked like, smelt like, anything.”

“I can try talking to Argent,” Isaac offers halfheartedly. Lydia bites the inside of her cheek. She did not mean to snap him.

“Would Mr. Yukimura know anything?” Derek asks.

“Unless it’s related to Korean or Japanese mythology, probably not,” Stiles says.

“We can still try,” Scott says.

“I’ll call Kira,” Stiles says, pulling out his phone and already leaving the room.

Stiles’s exit is an unspoken signal that their meeting is over. Isaac leaves after saying his goodbyes, and Derek rises from the couch to bring his breakfast plate to the kitchen. Lydia stands from her chair but remains in place, feeling disoriented.

“Lydia? Are you okay?” Scott’s brown eyes search her face, forehead creased with concern.

Lydia blinks. “Yeah. Just … tired. Didn’t exactly plan sleepwalking into my schedule last night.”

Scott smiles slightly. “Get some rest, then, okay?”

His hand brushes her shoulder as he walks her to the front door. Once upon a time, Lydia and Scott would have never interacted, but since their lives became entangled, they are much more familiar with each other, familiar enough for casual touches. Lydia knows it is partly because Derek taught Scott the importance of scent marking pack members, but another part is just the comfort of touch. Touch is the promise of safety, of comfort; it is a reminder of compassion and tenderness.

Lydia leaves Derek’s loft feeling slightly better. Perhaps this will be her only misadventure of the break.

* * *

Lydia Martin is intelligent; she always has been. But at age thirteen, Lydia’s priorities were very different. Generally, her goals were this: 

1) Get a boyfriend.

2) Be popular.

3) Do her best to not exasperate her parents.

4) Learn how to do her hair and make up like a pro.

And Lydia Martin, the unstoppable force of nature she was (and still is), did not fail to get the things she wants.

Number one and two, however, led Lydia to hide her intelligence. She aced all her classes – partly because it was easy, partly because a small part of Lydia wistfully hoped good grades might help keep her parents together (they didn’t) – but being smart, in junior high, was not really _cool_. The nerds were smart; the nerds were not cool; therefore, to be cool, Lydia could not be smart like a nerd. Additionally, after a couple short relationships, Lydia eventually started dating Jackson, and Jackson always felt threatened when he was not the best. Lydia did not want to threaten Jackson; not that way, at least. So Lydia Martin learned to hide her intelligence behind a façade of practiced vacant stares and obnoxious, glittery pens and notebooks.

Lydia became really good at hiding things.

* * *

The gravestone sits on the top of a hill. It is elegantly cut from a silvery-white marble, the inscription still clear. The dates are upsettingly close; a mere eighteen years. Above the numbers is the inscription: _Allison Argent_. _Daughter. Friend. Protector_. Then, in slightly smaller letters along the bottom, _Nous protégeons ceux qui ne peuvent pas se protéger eux mêmes_.

Lydia kneels next to the grave. She places a bouquet of white lilies on the green grass and tucks her hair behind her ear.

“It’s another spring day at Beacon Hills,” Lydia tells her friend. “Sun’s out. Wind going. Another monster is trying to kill everyone.”

Lydia clasps her hands. Visiting Allison is … difficult. Coming anywhere near her resting place always brings back the screams and sounds of that horrible night at Eichen House. Desperation had triggered something within Lydia; from the moment the nogitsune took her from the McCall house, Lydia has been more attuned to the voices – the voices of the dead, the dying, the banshees. That night, Lydia _heard_ Allison – heard the small gasp that escaped her when the sword entered her stomach, heard the whispers of pain in Allison’s thoughts. She heard what went through Allison’s mind in those last moments – concern and worry and love for her father, for Lydia, for Scott and Isaac and the whole pack.

Allison never thought she was a true member of the pack, but she still felt the obligation to defend it like it was hers.

“I miss you, you know,” Lydia says. “Kira is okay, but there’s – there’s no one I really talk to anymore. I talk to Stiles, but … it’s not the same. There’s too much history between us.”

Lydia sighs. The wind blows her strawberry curls into her face, but she cannot be bothered to fix it.

“I broke up with Jared. Not that we had an actual relationship. It was just sex.” Lydia plays with the ring on her finger. It is more subtle than Lydia’s usual jewelry, a series of three thin silver bands that look like branches. Oak branches, Stiles told her when they saw it at the mall, and Lydia decided she had to buy it. For irony’s sake.

“Is there something wrong with me?” Lydia asks. “Can I not fall in love? I mean – Allison, the only person I’ve ever loved turned into a homicidal lizard. And then he left.”

It sounds a bit pathetic, that a boyfriend from high school is the most romantic attachment Lydia has ever had. Even then, their relationship was terrible in more than one way. Jackson was an asshole, she was a bitch, and nothing came out of their relationship except a symbolic house key and a one-way ticket to London.

The younger Lydia would have rolled her eyes and scoffed at Allison’s star-crossed-lovers tale. But now …

“It’s stupid, but sometimes … I wish I could have what you had,” Lydia admits. “You know, the whole Romeo and Juliet romance, true love, whatever. Just without the death.”  Lydia winces. “Sorry,” she says, patting the ground near the gravestone.

The grave does not respond, and nor does Allison. Of course; the one circumstance in which Lydia might want to hear the dead, she cannot actually hear them; she can only hear the screams and cries of Allison’s last night in the living world.

Lydia sighs and lays her head against Allison’s tombstone. “I miss you, Allison. I miss us.”

* * *

Jackson Whittemore was both the best and worst thing that happened to Lydia during freshman and sophomore year.

They began dating at the end of junior high, sure, but they did not really have a relationship until high school; until ninth grade, they simply held hands and went to a few parties and kissed, with the occasional grope thrown in. Lydia swore she would never tell anyone, but they moved so slowly because Jackson – well, Jackson was really nervous about their relationship. It was pretty adorable, actually.

Then Jackson found out he was adopted.

He did not tell Lydia right away, but Lydia did notice a change in him; it is hard to miss a person’s reaction to his entire world being torn apart and remade by a single revelation. Within a week, Jackson turned from cocky and relaxed to violent and angry – always so angry. He and Lydia had their first major argument about something stupid, like what movie to watch; then, three days later, they had their first round of make-up sex. Coincidentally, it was also the first time either of them had sex with anyone.

By the end of freshman year, Jackson had cooled down a little, but he was irrevocably changed. A casual relationship became intense in the span of a couple months, and it wasn’t until later – post-graduation, in fact, long after Jackson had left – that Lydia realized she had become a kind of anchor for Jackson.

Jackson’s sixteenth birthday marked two major events: 1) Jackson got that obnoxious car of his, and 2) they exchanged their first real, heartfelt _I love you_ s.

Love is a strange thing, equally beautiful and terrifying. Maybe high schoolers do not actually fall in love; maybe a skeptic would say what Lydia and Jackson had was just a tenuous emotional connection strengthened by the hormones their bodies released during sex. But Lydia still believes their love _was_ love; how else does she explain what happened at the end of sophomore year?

As much as Jackson became a power-hungry, homicidal douchebag in sophomore year, he still taught Lydia a very important lesson: her love could be strong enough to save someone from himself.

* * *

“I still find it strange that you actually work at Macy’s now.”

Peter Hale leers at Lydia from behind a rack of on-sale dresses. “That shade of brown doesn’t go with your skin tone,” he snarks.

Lydia glances at the jacket sticking out of her bag. It is Scott’s; he was the one who found her at the preserve, that night, and he lent her the jacket because while werewolves may run hot, banshees do not.

“It’s not mine,” Lydia tells Peter, going for an air of indifference.

The façade is such a lie, though. Lydia has never felt indifferent towards Peter; since he attacked her three years ago, they have been irrevocably twined, in ways Lydia tries not to think about because they generally terrify and sicken her.

“I recommend you try on the Calvin Klein we just put in stock,” Peter says. His fingers curl over the clothing rack, and Lydia suppresses a shudder, envisioning claws lengthening out from his blunt fingertips.

“Thanks, but I think I’m going to go look at some shoes.”

Peter smirks, and Lydia knows he knows the shoe department is the farthest away from the dress department.

“Lydia?”

Lydia turns and briskly walks away from Peter. Her mother appears, holding a couple cardigans in her hands. She squints in the way she does when her contacts are getting too old, trying to see Peter. “Honey,” she says as Lydia approaches, “Do you recognize that man? I think I recognize him –”

“No, you don’t,” Lydia says, firmly steering her mother away from Peter’s watching eyes.

“But he looks so familiar –”

“Really, Mom, you don’t know him,” Lydia insists. “You’ve probably just seen him while shopping here before.”

Ms. Martin frowns. “I suppose.”

Lydia grabs the cardigans from her mother’s hands. “Really, Mom? Salmon?”

“I know, but I was thinking, if I matched it with my navy Tommy Hilfiger dress, then –”

“No, Mom. That’s a terrible mistake. You should be thanking me for putting this cardigan back –” Lydia tosses the offensive piece of clothing onto a nearby table “– and then going to the shoe department with me, because one of my favorite pair of boots has gone missing, and I need to replace them as soon as possible.”

Her mother laughs. “Okay, Lydia. No need to be so pushy.”

They leave the store an hour later, with several new shoes in tow. Lydia failed to mention her old boots were incinerated by hydra acid.

Lydia fails to mention many things to her mother, these days.

As they are leaving, Peter meets Lydia’s eye from where he is lurking behind a mannequin, and Lydia glares at him when her mother is not looking. No matter how adjusted Peter seems to everyone else, Lydia does not trust him. Lydia _knows_ ; she does have a supernatural connection to him and his consciousness.

Lydia wishes Peter was dead, but at the same time, she is afraid of what his death might do to her.

* * *

Lydia is not one to avoid indulging herself, and one of her favorite indulgences is long, relaxing baths. She sighs contentedly as she leaves the now lukewarm water and pulls the plug. Humming softly to herself, Lydia reaches out to grab her towel – but it is not there. She must have left it in her room.

Still humming, Lydia pushes open her bathroom door, her toes curling in the sudden cold. She tucks her hair behind her ear, twisting to pick up her towel –

“Lydia –”

Lydia yelps, her head snapping up, and Scott’s eyes blow wide. He stutters, frozen in place, “Oh my God, I did not mean to–” 

“Turn around!” Lydia says urgently.

“Right! Right!”

Scott whips around, and Lydia snatches up her towel, hastily wrapping it around herself.

“What are you doing here?” Lydia demands.

“Can I turn around now?”

Lydia rolls her eyes. Her heart is still pounding, but she inhales deeply and says, “Yes, fine.”

Scott turns. He looks sheepish, and Lydia takes some sympathy on him. She gestures for him to sit on her bed. “Why are you here?” She asks, then frowns. “How’d you even get in my room?”

If possible, he looks even more sheepish. “Window?” he says, smiling hesitantly.

 _Werewolves_. Seriously. “What’s going on?’

Scott sits down. “Argent found out the killer is a changeling.”

“And you decided to deliver this information in person?”

Scott grins. “Sort of.” He drops the smile. “Thing is, it’s not just a changeling. It has some sort of keeper or guardian, or something? Stiles says it’s a troll or fairy. And we don’t know where the guardian is.”

Lydia arches an eyebrow at him, and he stares blankly for a few seconds. Eventually, he asks, “Why are you … looking at me like that?”

Sometimes Scott misses the obvious. Or perhaps Lydia’s mind just makes connections too quickly for everyone else to keep up. “So why does the existence of a guardian mean you have to come here?” she asks.

Now _Scott_ is looking at her like she is the one missing something blatantly evident. “To protect you,” he answers, brown eyes wide and a crease appearing between his furrowed eyebrows.

Lydia looks down at her feet. For a couple seconds, it feels impossible to breathe; then the moment passes, and she can look Scott in the eyes again. “You can stay,” she offers, letting the words fall from her lips grudgingly, but she cannot suppress the warmth in her chest that comes with Scott’s relieved smile.

“Great.”

There is an awkward pause in which they look around Lydia’s room, occasionally glancing at each other, before Lydia finally gestures at the bathroom. “I’m going to go put some clothes on,” she says, cringing slightly because this whole situation is mildly embarrassing.

“Yeah! Of course,” Scott responds, all overeager, “That’s – that’s a great idea.”

Lydia nods at him before slipping into the other room. Once in there, she cannot help biting back a grin. True Alpha or not, Scott will always be a bit of a puppy.

* * *

For reasons she frustratingly cannot understand, Scott has become synonymous with safety in Lydia’s mind. It took her a surprisingly long time to realize this, but somewhere between getting nearly sacrificed by Jennifer and being attacked by the Oni, Lydia discovered that her knee-jerk reaction, whenever she was in danger, was to call for Scott. Scream for him, more accurately, praying with every fiber of her being that the teenager and now grown man would come for her.

Lydia is no damsel in distress, okay? Except for when she is. She has to face the facts; banshee or not, there are still some situations in which Lydia is helpless. She is not a werewolf, she is not a huntress, nor is she a trickster spirit with sword-wielding talents. Hell, even Stiles has his bat with which he can protect himself.

Lydia is armed with nothing but a pocket-sized taser and her lungs. And since most of the creatures that invade Beacon Hills are supernatural and strong, the taser generally does jack shit. Therefore, Lydia’s scream is her best asset.

By now Lydia has lost count of how many times Scott has saved her life by responding to her scream. It started with Jennifer, that frightening night during which Lydia was nearly strangled, the piano teacher died, and Jennifer snatched Sheriff Stilinski from right under their noses. Then there was that time with the Oni, even though she did not even want him to come; next a run-in with a coven of vampires; the ghouls; and the list goes on, so long that Lydia will accept the quantitative descriptor of “many” over a specific number. It goes like this: Lydia’s supernatural trouble detector leads her into some perilous situation; Lydia screams; Scott or the pack comes and saves her from imminent pain and death.

Scott has saved her life so many times that Lydia cannot blame her mind for associating him with safety.

This whole saving lives ordeal is not one-sided; perhaps Lydia might not be jumping in the fray to bust some heads, but she still does her damnedest as the planner, the thinker, the point woman, to get everyone through the pack’s battles intact and alive. Lydia’s role is just as important as the actual head-bashing; if it were not for her tactical skills (with help from Stiles, too), the pack would not nearly be as strong as it is.

So Lydia is content. Scott is her protector; she is his mastermind. No one owes anyone anything, and Lydia does not feel weak. No, for all the she contributes to her pack, she feels important. She feels stronger.

* * *

Lydia wakes to the sun streaming through her window. She blinks a few times before sitting up, vaguely wondering why she is under the covers but dressed regularly.

“You awake?”

Lydia jumps but relaxes when she sees it is Scott. He rises stiffly from the small couch in the corner of her room, wincing as he rolls out a kink in his neck.

“You could have slept in the bed,” Lydia mumbles before she is fully aware of what she is saying. She immediately wants to take back the soft-spoken, vulnerable words that only ever appear early in the morning or late at night, but Scott merely smiles crookedly.

“I’m fine,” he says, arching his spine.

Lydia slips out of bed and runs her fingers through her hair. “Do you want me to get you something to eat?’

“Sure.”

“Wait up here.”

Lydia pads downstairs, yawning into her hand. She is debating whether to bring Scott cereal or toast when she rounds the corner and sees her mother, curled over her morning coffee.

“Hi, Mom,” Lydia says, opening the fridge.

There is no response, and suddenly _it_ slams into Lydia, nausea and terror jolting her awake. She slams the refrigerator closed, her head pounding with the knowledge that something is wrong, wrong, _wrong_ –

Her mother is slumped over her coffee, the ends of her hair dragging in the brown liquid. Her eyes are half-lidded, glazed over and unseeing, and as Lydia cautiously steps closer, she notices bright blue lines patterning across the nape of her mother’s neck –

“ _Scott!_ ”

Footsteps come running down the hall; there is a thump, which Lydia assumes comes from Scott jumping down the stairs, and then the werewolf is whipping into the kitchen. “What’s wrong?”

He sees Lydia’s mother and immediately rushes to Lydia’s side, a hand on Lydia’s shoulder to keep her – Lydia does not know, to keep her from lurching forward or running away.

“Do you recognize those marks?” Scott asks her.

Lydia shakes her head. Oh, God, her mother – her mother is not okay –

Scott’s phone rings, and he digs it out of his pocket. “Stiles,” he mutters, reading the screen, then picks the call up. “Stiles, this is important, do you know –”

Stiles interrupts him, but Lydia cannot be bothered to try to make out his quick words. Instead she focuses on the ring on her mother’s right hand, the one with the large amethyst jewel on it. Her mother’s skin looks pale, waxy, and Lydia involuntarily reaches out with shaking fingers, wondering what it feels like –

Scott’s hand grabs hers. “Don’t touch her,” he orders.

“But –”

“ _Lydia_. Don’t.”

Some part of her mind is still rational enough to listen to Scott, so she draws back from her mother’s listless body, pressing against Scott’s side.

Scott hangs up and immediately turns to Lydia. “Listen to me,” he says, “Your mother is going to be fine –”

“She is?” _She doesn’t look fine_ , Lydia’s thoughts whisper.

“Yes, she is. But we have get out of here, now, because the troll could be nearby –”

“Troll?”

“Yes, the guardian, the troll. It’s looking for someone, someone else to host the changeling, because Argent has the changeling’s current body captive.”

“I thought only young children could be taken by changelings,” Lydia says. Her brain is starting to function again, though her headache does not disappear and her ears are starting to ring.

“Young children,” Scott agrees, “But Argent said he’s seen some changelings that can temporarily take over another supernatural creature’s body.”

Would the heavy breathing in her head just _stop?_ “Which means –”

Lydia’s sentence is cut off by the front door suddenly bursting open. A shriek hitches in her throat, and Scott partially shifts, his eyes glowing and his fangs and claws coming out in an instant.

“Lydia, get back –”

Lydia backs into the corner of the room as some _thing_ appears in the kitchen. It is vaguely humanoid, as it is bipedal with two arms and a head, but the proportions are all warped, and its skin is a revolting, scaly, gray-ish blue color. Scott roars at it, and it turns its glazed gray eyes to him, saliva dripping from the corner of its mouth.

It inhales deeply, and so does the sound in Lydia’s head, and _oh_ , how disgusting, she has a troll in her head.

“Lydia, run!” Scott says.

The troll swings a fist, alarmingly fast, and Scott barely ducks out of the way in time. Lydia scampers away, attempting to block out the troll’s double roar, while her mind frantically tries to formulate a plan.

Lydia runs through the living room and into the garage. Trolls, trolls, what does she know about trolls? She has heard of them, through her research and Deaton’s occasional unhelpful and cryptic hint, but the pack has never dealt with one before. Their skin is thick, like rhinoceros hide, but it also secretes a thin layer of mucus, which makes them hard to grip. They are strong, relatively quick, but –

Their eyes. Their eyes are their weakness.

Lydia grabs a stepladder and retrieves the old ski poles from above the cabinets in the garage. They are long enough that they can harm the troll without putting the wielder in danger, and their tips are sharp. Good enough to get the job done.

Lydia scrambles down from the ladder and runs back inside. She does not even need to listen to know the fight has moved from the kitchen; she can just follow that insistent tug in her gut, the pull that tells her _come here, Lydia, come here, we have something terrible for you, but you cannot avoid it_ –

Lydia sprints up the back stair case and races down the hall. Scott and the troll are in the foyer, the troll’s head dangerously close to taking out the chandelier hanging from the center of the high ceiling.

“Scott!” Lydia shouts. “Its eyes! They’re its weakness!”

Scott glances up for a second, then has to roll to avoid the troll’s fist again. “Throw one to me!” he yells, and Lydia tosses one of the ski poles.

“Hey!” she shouts at the troll. “Over here!”

The troll refuses to turn, and Lydia grits her teeth. She steels herself for what she is about to do, because she really hates doing it, but Scott needs her help.

Lydia inhales deeply and concentrates on the troll echoing in her own mind. It is grunting, its breathing labored, and Lydia lets the sound consume her. She imagines twisting the sound into a small rope, until it is concentrated into a thin line, and with her mind, she just …

 _Plucks_.

The troll spins around, immediately drawn to her. Lydia clenches her jaw, feeling the slightest amount of blood drip out of her nose. She waits, waits, ski pole in hand –

The milky blue orbs fixate on her –

And –

Lydia thrusts the ski pole, piercing the troll’s eye. It screams, and the rope in Lydia’s head also bursts, causing Lydia to stagger. She hears Scott roar, then the troll, and then –

Quiet.

In her head, at least. She is breathing heavily, as is Scott. The troll’s body thunks onto the polished floor, two ski poles sticking out of its ocular orifices at different angles. Lydia wipes the blood away from her nose, her hands shaking slightly.

“You okay?” Scott asks.

Lydia nods. “Yeah. Yes, I’m fine.”

Scott looks at the troll and sighs. “Guess we better take care of this before your mother wakes up.”

* * *

“Done!” Stiles crows, throwing up his arms and leaning back in his chair.

“You would’ve been done a week ago if you’d managed your time better,” Lydia says primly, eyes not drifting from her textbook. She is curled up on the couch in the apartment she and Stiles share, refreshing her memory on vector calculus.

Stiles closes his laptop and gets up, rolling his head and stretching. “You know I dislike essays,” he says.

“You had no problem with that essay on _The Two Babylons_.”

“But that was actually interesting.”

Lydia smiles, and Stiles plops down next to her. “What do you want for dinner?” he asks.

“Mmm. Not sure.”

Stiles frowns, his gaze turning sharper. “Are you doing okay?”

Lydia stares intently at her knees. There was a time when she would roll her eyes and say, _Yes, Stiles, I’m fine. Stop worrying_. But since she and Stiles have grown closer, since the people Lydia cares about have become more and more likely to die at any moment, Lydia can no longer be sure of her state. She can no longer hide everything from Stiles, her roommate and best friend.

“I don’t know,” she says softly.

Gently, Stiles removes the textbook from her lap and takes her hands in his own. “Hey, Lydia,” he says softly, “You can talk to me.”

Lydia deflates. “I can’t stop feeling like something is _wrong_ ,” she says.

“Like … dead-body-nearby wrong?”

“No –”

“Someone-is-going-to-die wrong?”

“No –”

“It’s-nearly-that-time-of-the-month wrong?”

“Stiles!”

Stiles grins goofily, and Lydia smiles for a second, but it quickly melts away. “It’s none of those,” she says. “It’s … it’s a feeling like something bad is waiting to happen, just looming over our heads.”

Stiles turns serious again. “Are you sleeping all right?”

“Not really.”

“You know –” Stiles swallows. “You can always – always share a bed if –”

Lydia exhales. Nightmares sent her crawling into Stiles’s bed one time, and Lydia is _never_ doing that again. Stiles – he starfishes when he sleeps. Absolutely _starfishes_ across the bed, and then clings like a barnacle. It would be cute – endearing, even – if he was not doing it on top of Lydia.

“Thanks, but no,” she says.

Stiles grins self-deprecatingly. “Looks like there’s no way to get Lydia Martin in my bed.”

“It’s never happening.”

Stiles snorts, playing with Lydia’s fingers. He turns her palm over and notices the crescent scars lining the bottom of Lydia’s palm. “Nightmares?” he prompts.

“No, I just enjoy digging my nails into my skin,” Lydia replies sarcastically.

The corner of Stiles’s lip tugs upward. “What are they about?”

“I don’t know.”

God, Lydia wishes she could give Stiles a single straight answer. But honestly, since Peter bit her, half of Lydia’s life has been submerged in shadow and uncertainty. The nightmares she has recently been having are hazy, nebulous, but they consistently leave a sour taste in Lydia’s mouth. When she dreams, Lydia smells ash and decay, and she always feels a bit … unhinged. Like there is something loose in her mind, and with one false move, she will come crashing and burning down, and the consequences will _not_ be pretty.

“How about pasta tonight?” Lydia asks.

Stiles gives her a look. “Lydia, my goal this semester is to get laid, not get fat.”

Lydia snorts. “You’re trying too hard, Stilinski.”

Stiles stands up, cracking his spine again. “What do you mean?” he asks, confused.

“If you want sex that badly, you’ve been looking in the wrong places.”

Stiles narrows his eyes at her. “I would ask what you mean again,” he says, “But you’re only going to get more cryptic, and the last time you meddled in one of my relationships, it went terribly.”

“I did tell you, Stiles,” Lydia says, pulling her textbook back onto her lap, “you and Jake would not work out –”

“No! No. We are not allowed to speak that name here. Also, I am a grown man, Miss Martin; I can make my _own_ decisions about _my_ relationships.”

Lydia rolls her eyes fondly, her spirits lifted for a moment, but as Stiles turns on his music and begins to putter around the kitchen, she cannot help sighing heavily. Lydia remembers a time when Stiles was more persistent. When he sensed something was wrong – and he was good at that – Stiles would poke and prod Lydia until she either confessed what was going on or gave into his demands out of irritation. Stiles is still stubborn, still has his infamous, dogged determination, but Lydia … Lydia has worn him down. Now, if Lydia avoids certain topics, Stiles will back down and let her be. Lydia has gotten too good at pushing him away.

Lydia does not know if that is a good thing or not.

* * *

Being the only banshee in the pack, Lydia is often reminded that she is the odd one. But somewhere, some deity or force of nature must hate her, because even by banshee standards, Lydia is not normal.

Braden Parrish, once he had deemed Lydia safe enough to associate with and to reveal his banshee identity to, had tried to explain it to her – the reason _why_ she was as special as Peter always said she was.

Lydia was a banshee, yes, Braden said, but she was so different from the other banshees he knew. She could sense imminent death, she had the scream, she could hear the things only banshees could hear. But Lydia could go _beyond_. She could hear the dying words and thoughts of people and things that had passed years ago. Her nightmares were atypically frequent and, to an unprecedented extent, prophetic. She could shape sound as a weapon, twisting and manipulating noises until the pull Lydia felt was reversed, and instead _she_ was pulling the _other_ being in – reversing the pull, Braden called it.

And as much as Lydia resented the deputy for hiding himself for so long, she could not argue with his reasons for not being immediately forthright. 

“What you don’t understand, Lydia, is that you are unprecedented,” he said once. “You are unique, and in the world of the supernatural, that usually means dangerous.”

Lydia could understand his position. Damn her for her understanding of logic; damn her for letting Scott’s empathetic ways rub off on her.

Yet Braden was still helpful. He served as a sort of mentor for Lydia; he taught her tricks to easing her mind and her powers, simple things like drinking herbal teas on a regular basis and sleeping with specific flowers in her bedroom depending on the month of the year. He suggested physical techniques that helped Lydia ground her conscious when her banshee senses began to go haywire. Ultimately, it was because of Braden that Lydia survived junior year; by the time he left right before senior year, Lydia no longer lived in utter fear of her abilities.

That did not mean they did not still scare her from time to time.

* * *

There are three minutes left of Lydia’s class when Stiles and Scott appear outside the windows of her lecture hall. They wave furiously at her, making faces and jostling each other, and Lydia snorts as she bites back a smile. A few other people in class notice and mumble, nodding towards the window, but Lydia does not let it bother her. People are too used to Stiles’s antics, and Scott visits frequently enough for people to recognize him.

When the class finally ends and Lydia leaves the room, Scott scoops her up in a huge hug and spins her around. She yelps and smacks his arm, more surprised than anything, but she cannot hold back her grin. “What was that for?” she demands, straightening her skirt once Scott sets her down.

Scott smiles goofily. “Hey, Lydia.”

“Scott’s staying with us for the weekend, okay?” Stiles asks.

“Of course that’s okay,” Lydia says, rolling her eyes.

Stiles grins and nudges Scott’s shoulder with his own.

They begin walking to Lydia and Stiles’s apartment, and the boys flank her on either side. “So Scotty got a big surprise coming back from spring break,” Stiles says.

“Oh?” Lydia asks.

“A girl in my bio class was bitten over spring break,” Scott says.

“Seriously?”

Scott nods. “Yeah. Elise Midgen. Turns out her cousin is an alpha, and he offered her the bite over break. She accepted.”

“Will she be okay during the full moon?” Stiles asks.

Scott shrugs. “Probably. If not, I can handle it.”

“Even if you’re not her alpha?” Lydia asks.

Scott grins, slightly cocky. “I’m still an alpha.”

“True Alpha,” Stiles adds, ruffling Scott’s hair.

Lydia rolls her eyes. Sometimes Stiles seems to play the proud-parent role for Scott. Lydia is torn between finding it weird and thinking it cute. She decides to leave the matter alone for the moment, and instead asks Scott, “Do you know Elise well?”

“Sort of. I met her through class, and I’ve run into her at a few parties. She’s nice. Kind of small, short. She’s dating – what’s his face? Aiden.”

Lydia flinches, but immediately reassures herself it could not be that Aiden. That Aiden is dead, permanently dead, and his brother had left soon after. The pack is not sure where Ethan went, or where he is now; at one point, he sent a letter to Scott, but Scott had no idea how to respond, and the letter itself only contained a short message that expressed Ethan’s continuing existence and reassured them that he held nothing against the pack of Beacon Hills, whether it belonged to Derek or Scott.

Scott senses Lydia’s moment of unease, and he lightly brushes a hand across her back. Stiles picks up on his action and similarly elbows Lydia’s side affectionately.

“I assume you’ll have to speak to her Alpha,” Lydia says, aiming for nonchalance.

“Probably,” Scott replies. “I mean, I’ll first have to tell Elise I know about her. I thought I’d call Derek later, ask him if he knows the etiquette for dealing with this type of pack interrelation.”

“Derek would know,” Stiles says confidently.

Lydia’s gaze flickers towards Stiles. Stilinski, subtlety is _not_ thy name.

The three of them begin to near a large crowd of students, but as they draw closer, the other students part, leaving Lydia an open path in which she can walk, Scott and Stiles trailing after her. Lydia swallows down a laugh; people have not parted like this for her since sophomore year of high school. She has an inkling of an idea why they part for her like Moses at the Red Sea, but she does not try to express it in formal words.

In another minute, they are at the apartment, and Stiles disappears into his room to scrounge up some change to get Chinese take-out. Lydia dumps her bag on a chair and sits at the kitchen counter, watching Scott root around the fridge for a snack. He reemerges with an apple in his hand.

“How are your classes?” Scott asks.

“Fine. Some of them are just boring,” Lydia says dismissively.

Scott grins. “You’re just too smart for everyone.”

“You’re lucky to have me in your pack,” Lydia teases.

“Yeah,” Scott says, smiling softly, “I am.”

Lydia bites the inside of her cheek, praying her cheeks are not as flushed as they currently feel.

Suddenly Scott stiffens, tilting his head in the direction of Stiles’s room. Unease pools in Lydia’s gut. “What is it?” she asks, already full of dread.

“They’re found another one,” Scott says.

Stiles reappears, cell phone held up to his ear and his expression grim. “It’s Isaac,” he says. “He found a new body.”

Lydia sighs. Beacon Hills never gives it a rest. At least, Lydia thinks selfishly, her college being this far away keeps her from feeling the pull of the bloody horrors.

But that does not mean Lydia cannot still be useful. “What are the details?” she asks Stiles, and he puts his phone on speaker so they can help Isaac hatch a plan.

* * *

You do not screw with Lydia Martin and her boys.

This is the number one unspoken rule of campus. Lydia Martin is scary enough as it is. Lydia is dangerously smart, frighteningly ruthless, and viciously protective. She is a force of nature, a power to be reckoned with; Lydia takes no prisoners, and in her world, she is the sole reigning monarch, answering to nothing and bowing to no one. And if that were not enough, Lydia has her _boys_. There are two of them, Stilinski and McCall, and they are often seen trailing Miss Martin by a half-step, one at each of her shoulders. 

Stilinski is the loud one, the one who challenges Lydia step for step but will still fuck you up with his quick mouth and sharp tongue if you so much as _look_ at Lydia the wrong way. McCall, on the other hand, is the muscle. He encourages Lydia to be her best; he is tender and kind and compassionate like no other. But if you even _think_ about laying a finger on Lydia …

Everyone has heard the stories. On Halloween of freshman year, Nathaniel Cormack tried to make an unwanted move on Lydia, and McCall punched him so hard the bruise lasted for _weeks_. When Cormack’s friends went looking for McCall, Stilinski got them so bad they spent an entire night hanging upside down from a streetlamp – and _no one_ had the evidence that Stilinski did it, other than the satisfied curl to his lips and the glint in his eye. One petty professor who marked down Lydia for disproving his theories spent an entire month getting pranked by Lydia’s boys. Stilinski, skinny, sarcastic Stilinski, made a two-hundred-pound football player piss his pants when he attempted to grab Lydia’s ass at a party. One long weekend, McCall saved Lydia from a _mountain lion attack_.

If you value your life, you acknowledge and obey the number one rule: you do _not_ fuck around with Lydia Martin and her boys.

* * *

Lydia is not blind. She knows that Derek and Stiles are closer than they would ever admit to anyone, even to each other, but she keeps quiet for the sake of preserving the peace. And, if she is being honest, she finds their cautious, flirtatious dancing around each other highly amusing.

The rest of the pack is also in the know. Stiles and Derek may think they are subtle, but they all know each other too well. They can all see how Stiles loves being around Derek, bickering and arguing and laughing with him. Stiles is forever finding ways to push Derek's buttons, but Derek is Stiles's equal, so he pushes right back. Stiles constantly grabs hold of Derek, tugging on his shirt or gripping his shoulder.

Derek, too, always seeks out ways to touch Stiles. He is never as forward as Stiles – he does not reach out to wrap a hand around Stiles's wrist or pull the other man in close by the waist – but he still finds ways to be close to Stiles. Fleeting brushes that border on scent marking; pressing up against Stiles's side or back whenever they are close enough.

Like now, for instance. The pack is gathered at the Stilinskis' house; it is the first time since summer vacation has started that they have all seen each other at the same place. Isaac, Danny, and Kira are on the couch, looking at photos Danny took when he was visiting his cousins in Hawaii. Lydia is perched on a stool next to Scott, and the two of them are mixing together cookie batter per Stiles's instructions. Even Malia and Peter are there, standing in a corner of the room uncomfortably. Malia rarely comes around; she moved to Colorado as soon as she graduated BHHS, and her relationship with Peter is awkward at best.

Stiles and Derek, however, are standing over a spread of books on the kitchen table. Not cookbooks, but  a combination of bestiaries and mythology texts that the pack has procured over the years. They are trying to find out who or what is behind the new string of bodies – bodies that have appeared not just in Beacon Hills, but in a hundred mile radius with their town at the center.

"A kanima might explain how widespread the killings are," Stiles is saying, "if its master is going after a specific group of people who have spread out over the area. But it can’t be a kanima, because otherwise the victims –"

"Would have traces of kanima paralytic in their veins," Derek completes for him.

"Or incisions on their necks, at the least."

"Have you considered the possibility of multiple killers?" Scott pipes up.

"That is a possibility," Stiles admits.

"But there have not been two deaths on the same day yet, so our preliminary research has been focused on individual creatures," Lydia explains.

"What's that?" Derek asks, tapping a finger against a picture in one of the books. The motion causes his arm to cross in front of Stiles's body and presses Derek's shoulder to Stiles's chest.

Stiles's head drops closer to Derek's neck, and Derek leans into Stiles's body as Stiles begins to launch into an explanation about some obscure South American creation legend.

Lydia exchanges a glance with Scott. Months ago, they had a conversation about Derek and Stiles; Lydia had asked how Derek felt about Stiles, exactly, and Scott replied, “I think … Stiles is to Derek what Allison once was for me."

"An anchor," Lydia supplied, and Scott had nodded, eyes full of grief. There is a part of Scott, Lydia believes, that will always be grieving for Allison.

Anchors are dangerous things, or so Lydia thinks. Of course she does not think having a bunch of feral, anchor-less werewolves running around is a good thing, but some anchors are so delicate Lydia fears for those people. Having an emotion as an anchor is dangerous, and a person as an anchor seems just as risky. She has heard of how screwed up the surviving Hales were after the fire; she knows Malia's anchor was her sister, and her death caused Malia to spend eight years stuck as a coyote. Isaac's control over his shift was tenuous until he found an anchor to replace his dead, abusive father, and in her dark and doubtful moments, Lydia imagines what terrible things would have happened to Scott if Allison had been his anchor when she died.

Scott’s current anchor, though, only the second one he has had, is himself. He found a way to be his own anchor, and that type of ownership and command of himself is something Lydia greatly admires. Scott is stronger because of his anchor, and it is an anchor no one can ever take from him.

But Lydia also understands Scott is unique. Derek will probably never be capable of anchoring himself; his past is too guilt- and doubt-ridden to allow him to trust himself so deeply. So if Stiles has become Derek's new anchor, well – that is the best damn anchor Derek can get right now.

"Pass me the vanilla, would you?" Lydia asks. Scott obliges, and Lydia adds half a teaspoon to the mixing bowl. Stiles and Derek have shifted to the point at which they are nearly holding each other, and Lydia sighs. This dance cannot possibly last much longer.

"Lydia? You have a bit of flour –" Scott gestures at his own cheek, and Lydia brushes her wrist against her left cheek.

Scott shakes his head. "No – here –"

He reaches out and drags his thumb softly over her right cheek a few times. Lydia stares at him, his countenance one of complete concentration, brown eyes focused on her cheek and lips slightly parted.

Lydia flushes, and when Scott pulls his hand away, she stands up abruptly. "I need to use the bathroom," she says, and that is where she goes. She remains there until her heartbeat stops racing and she can breathe normally.

There is just _something_ about Scott McCall.

* * *

Lydia wakes up in the middle of the fountain that sits outside of the bed and breakfast on the edge of town. She wishes she could say this is the first time this has happened to her, but honestly, it is not. Grimacing, she pushes herself upright and tries to ignore the unpleasant sensations of water swishing through her shorts and the night breeze dancing over her skin. In a few seconds, she is wide awake, and she can completely sense the pull, urging her to go behind the bed and breakfast.

Lydia sighs. For reasons unknown, Lydia’s powers draw her to this place every couple months. No one in the pack could make sense of it; there could find no special features, natural or supernatural, to the small, fenced-in backyard of the bed and breakfast. Nonetheless, the pull will not let go of Lydia until she has walked around the grassy patch and seen, with her own two eyes, that there is nothing there.

So of course this is the time she finds the body.

Lydia chokes back her immediate urge to scream, aware that people are sleeping in the safety of the building. The body is piled at the base of a tree, spine curved in a way that would surely be uncomfortable if the woman was not already dead. Lydia swallows hard, approaching the body cautiously and listening intently. She strains herself, her ears alert for any sound, and she hears –

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Lydia’s pulse suddenly thunders. This has never happened before; she has always been able to hear _something_ , a person’s last words, their last thoughts, the sounds they heard during moments of extreme stress, but this body is silent. This woman will not share her secrets from the grave, and it is freaking Lydia _out_.

Lydia scans the area with heightened caution. There does not seem to be anyone out there, and she does not sense anything, either, but what if something can be done to interfere with her abilities? The last thing Lydia wants is to die, soaking wet with fountain water, in the middle of the night in the back lot of a bed and breakfast.

Lydia waits for a full minute before deciding to risk turning her back to the forest. Thank goodness the B&B is run by naïvely trusting people; it is easy for Lydia, as she has done several times before, to sneak in the back door and use the phone in the kitchen.

Her fingers shake as she punches the number, but eventually she gets the phone ringing. She shivers as she waits, hoping she is not dripping on the floor too much.

“ ‘Lo?”

“I found a body.”

There is a crash and a muttered curse from the other end of the line. “Lydia?”

Lydia rolls her eyes, imagining Scott falling off his bed. “No, the other banshee you know from Beacon Hills.”

“Where are you?”

“The bed and breakfast.”

There is another crash from Scott’s side. “ _What?_ ”

“I know! Or, I don’t know.” Lydia shakes her head. “Just, come quickly? Please?”

“”Yeah, yes, of course – I’ll be there –”

“I need to go.”

“What? Lydia, no!” Scott says frantically. “No, don’t do anything, just wait for me –”

Lydia grits her teeth. “I have to go, Scott.” She has to find _something_ from the body, just something. She is terrified but restlessly curious – she wants to know why she cannot hear anything from the body.

“Lydia, it could be dangerous –”

“That’s never made a difference before.”

Scott sighs. “Fine. Just – be careful.”

“Bye, Scott.”

Lydia hangs up and creeps out to the back again. The body has not moved (as ridiculous as that observation sounds, Lydia has learned it is also a very comforting one), and nothing seems to have entered the yard. Lydia cautiously makes her way across to the tree, her bare feet beginning to grow numb from the cold ground. When she reaches the body, Lydia inhales shakily before sitting down.

The woman looks to be in her thirties. She is plain looking, with a relatively pleasing face and high cheekbones, but death has given her a pasty, sunken look. The silence she gives off is extremely unnerving to Lydia, and Lydia has to take several deep breaths before she can reach out and touch the woman’s body.

The instant skin touches skin a cacophony of noises slams into Lydia, causing her to instinctively recoil. The wind picks up, and Lydia shivers, bracing herself to touch the body again.

 _It is just a dead woman_ , Lydia reminds herself, but dead people in her world are so much more than lifeless bodies, so the words do nothing to ease Lydia’s tension.

This time Lydia forces herself to grip the woman’s arm, biting the inside of her cheek to keep her grounded in the storm of noises. Usually, after a few moments, the voices sort themselves out, but for some reason, this storm stays strong, whipping around the inside of Lydia’s head until she feels the urge to scream – an urge she must suppress if she is to learn from the body before someone finds her out here and calls the police.

“Come on,” Lydia murmurs. The metallic taste of blood explodes across her tongue; she must have bitten on her cheek too hard.

 _Eyes_ –

Lydia snatches at the one clear word, but the rest of the phrase is swallowed again. She gnaws on her cheek again, fingers convulsively gripping tighter to the corpse’s arm. “Come _on_.”

 _Eyes_ –

 _Fangs_ –?

“Come on, _please_.”

 _Eyes_ –

 _Fangs_ –

 _Smile_ –

“ _Come_ –”

“Oh, sweet _Lord!_ ”

Lydia jumps and whirls around. The back door is open, and an elderly woman stands in the doorway, one hand on her chest. She stares back at Lydia, with wide eyes, and Lydia sees the woman’s intent to scream –

Lydia springs up and sprints away, thinking nothing but _run run run_ , and the woman begins screeching about _murder, murder!_ Lydia blindly stumbles through the woods, hearing nothing but her labored breathing and the voice of the dead woman, over and over, _eyes fangs smile eyes fangs smile eyes fangs smile eyes fangs_ –

Something grabs Lydia, and Lydia screeches, thrashing her body back and forth. It takes her a second to realize her captor is shouting something in her ear, desperate and worried, “Lydia! Lydia, it’s me, it’s _me_ –”

“Scott,” Lydia breathes out, and the fight leaves her. Her knees gives out, and Scott catches her, holding her up against his chest.

“What happened? Is there something after you?”

“No,” Lydia says, still gulping in air. Her body is wracked by violent shuddering, and the taste of blood in her mouth is even thicker. “Someone … someone saw me. With the body.”

“Did they recognize you?”

Lydia closes her eyes, focusing on the grounding movement of Scott’s hand smoothing over her tangled, still-wet hair. “Don’t think so,” Lydia mumbles. “Not local. Elderly. Probably bad eye sight.”

“You got lucky.”

“Uh-huh.”

Scott hisses when Lydia’s fingers touch the back of his neck. “You’re cold!” he says.

Lydia glares, teeth chattering too strongly for her to respond with a withering retort.

“Can you stand on your own?”

Lydia gingerly tests her legs and finds they can support her weight. Scott lets go of her to whip off his jacket and wrap it around her shoulders instead. “Let’s get you somewhere warm.”

“The – the body?”

“I think we’ll have to leave this one to the police.”

Lydia nods and tries to suppress the discontent rising within her.

* * *

The metal table is cold to the touch, but Lydia is sufficiently warmer than she was a couple hours ago. She is wearing a strange combination of whatever they could find in the vet’s office: mint-green scrub pants, a giant ASPCA t-shirt, one of Scott’s thick winter flannels. Her feet are covered by Scott’s boots, and her hair is halfway dry.

Scott enters, sock-footed, with a blanket in hand. “Don’t worry, it’s clean,” he tells Lydia with a slight smile as he hands it to her.

Lydia grabs it and wraps it around her shoulders. “Thanks,” she says.

“What did the body tell you?” Scott asks.

“I – it was strange. I couldn’t hear anything.”

His eyebrows furrow. “Anything?”

“Nothing at all. So I tried … touching it. But then nothing was clear enough to comprehend, except –”

“Eyes, fangs, smile.”

“Yes.”

Scott does not say anything for several long moments, and Lydia resists the urge to curl up and hide underneath her blanket. She is exhausted and frustrated; she wants to know _why_ she could not hear the body; she wants to know what is doing the killing, so the pack can take care of it and she will stop sleepwalking and waking up in fountains at the outskirts of town.

“We can ask Deaton if he knows anything when he comes in,” Scott suggests.

“Stiles and I have never heard of this happening before.”

“Then Derek probably hasn’t, either.”

“I can ask Kira to talk to her father.”

“What about Peter?”

Lydia flinches. “If he knows, he won’t tell us.”

Scott frowns. “Why not?”

 _Because you don’t know Peter like I do_ , Lydia thinks. _You don’t live inside his head. You aren’t the one who revived him, and you aren’t the one who is haunted by him in every nightmare you’ve had since he bit you_.

But Lydia doesn’t say any of this. “When has he ever given a straightforward answer to any of our questions?”

Scott sighs. “True.” 

He absentmindedly picks at a thread that has come loose from the blanket, and Lydia lets the ensuing silence fall. She is itching, and not just because the scrubs are uncomfortable on her bare skin; she wants to talk to Scott. She wants to confide in him the weird feelings she has been happening, this odd unstableness, as if something feral has made a home in the back of her mind. But words would not be enough to make Scott understand what she is feeling, the _danger_ of it. He is not a banshee; he cannot understand her supernatural instincts anymore than she can understand his. Besides, the last thing Lydia wants is to worry Scott about something that might turn out being completely inconsequential.

“Hello? Lydia?”

Lydia startles back into the present. “What were you saying?” she asks.

Scott frowns at her, and oh, that is his worried face. “Are you all right?” he asks.

Lydia nods, but when Scott’s expression turns doubtful, she sighs. “Just some weird vibes,” she mumbles, hunching over. “It’s nothing.”

“Are you sure–?”

“It’s nothing.”

Scott searches her face but apparently does not find anything. He puts a gentle hand on her knee and says, “I’ll bring you home, okay?’

“We should wait for Deaton –”

“You’re shivering again, Lydia. Deaton can wait.”

And she is; she had not even noticed it. “Okay,” she acquiesces, and Scott helps her down from the operation table. The entire walk out to his car, Scott keeps a hand on her lower back, and Lydia allows herself to lean into his touch. If he asks her about it, she will claim near-hypothermia weakened her body.

Yeah. Hypothermia.

* * *

Lydia almost prefers finding the bodies during the day, when she is already conscious and awake. The daylight takes away some of the ethereal horror Lydia feels whenever she sees whichever dismembered corpse her mind has pulled her to most recently, yet at the same time, Lydia hates finding bodies in the day because it reminds her of just how often nightmare is reality in her life.

Really, Lydia just hates finding bodies.

This body is in an alley, the entrance of which Lydia has already conveniently blocked off with her car. She is staring at the body, praying her breakfast stays where it is, while she attempts to hear what the body has to say.

It is a young man with a shock of red hair. Lydia is selfishly glad that his face is not directed towards her. Seeing the faces is unsettling; faces give an identity. The cooling corpse in front of her used to have family, friends, dreams, fears, aspirations. Sometimes, the reality of death hits Lydia, and she is left terrified, unable to breathe, drowning in the question of why do we even bother with life when we all end up in the same place?

So Lydia breathes through her mouth and tries not to think too much about the blood that is a mere inch from her hands.

The whisperings in the back of Lydia’s mind grow clearer at an excruciatingly slow pace. She closes her eyes and twists her fingers together impatiently, waiting for the voices to sort themselves out. She only has a few minutes before someone inevitably finds her, and that someone might not be a part of the pack.

 _He’s creepy_.

It is the first thought to float up, and Lydia grasps onto it. She imagines the words like the end of a string, one that she wraps around her fingers and begins to pull at. The sounds begin to unravel, flowing into Lydia’s mind in a steady stream.

– _Following me? He’s creepy. What – what are his eyes doing? Are those–? “Red hair? Mm. I do like that color.” “The hell –!” He’s not_ human –

Screams, growls, snarls, laughter, they crash around Lydia’s skull, thundering and echoing. Blood drips out of her nose, and she digs her nails into her palms, but it is pointless; she has lost control. She tries to grapple with the sound, wrest it into some manageable shape and shove it out, but it refuses to be controlled. Suddenly there is the distinct sound of blood splattering on pavement, and Lydia immediately loses her breakfast, retching on the pavement. Strangely enough, vomiting has a stabilizing effect on her; the noises fade until there is nothing but her own heartbeat in her ears. She gasps, her throat burning, waiting for the black spots to clear from her vision.

“Lydia?”

Lydia turns as little as possible, glancing out of the corner of her eye. Stiles and Scott are there; Stiles breaks into a run, but Scott stops him with a hand to his chest. Lydia turns back, screwing her eyes shut, and tries to swallow past the acrid taste in her throat.

“Lydia!” Stiles calls again. “Lydia, what happened, are you okay? Are you –”

Lydia vomits again, and she vaguely registers the soft rumble of Scott’s voice. Stiles stops speaking, and gentle hands pull Lydia’s hair back from her face. Lydia shakily wipes a hand over her mouth, trying to pull herself together.

Scott moves around and crouches in front of her. “Lydia –”

“Shh,” she interrupts. “Quieter. Please.” Her head still pounds, threatening to split open with a migraine.

“Okay,” he whispers, shifting closer to her. “Did you hear anything?”

“Yeah. Lot.”

Scott takes her hands and glances up at Stiles. “Her heartbeat is going crazy,” he tells Stiles.

“We can take her to my dad’s place –”

“No,” Lydia says. She forces herself to open her eyes. She can slowly feel herself recovering, but a feeling of sickness lingers in the back of her head, and she has herbs at home that can help.

“Your place?” Scott asks.

Lydia nods, then immediately stops when the movement makes her nauseous again.

Scott and Stiles quickly debate about what to do; it is eventually decided that Scott will take Lydia in her car and Stiles will go to the station to warn his father about the body. The entire time, Scott still holds her hands, and even when he begins to drive, he curls his fingers lightly around her wrist.

In ten minutes Lydia is back in her room, Scott standing just behind her shoulder. She drags herself numbly to her bathroom, where she strips out of her clothes and splashes some water on her face. When she looks in the mirror, her reflection is pale and gaunt.

She pulls on a shirt and shorts, then reenters the bedroom. Scott is sitting on her couch, but he pops up when she enters. “Feeling better?” he asks.

Lydia nods. She opens the drawer of her nightstand and finds a small bag filled with a mixture of herbs, a mix that Braden taught her to make. The herbs do not taste that pleasant, but Lydia has learned to mix them with water and swallow them down; it is a small price to pay for her relative peace of mind.

“What did you hear?” Scott asks.

Lydia sits down on her bed. The blanket is soft against her skin, comforting and familiar when she still feels off-center. “Not many details, unfortunately,” she says. “The attacker was male. Like the last one, last week, there was something off about the attacker’s eyes. And then it was just screaming, and growling, and blood splattering …”

Lydia does not realize her hands are shaking until Scott kneels before her and takes her them. She squeezes his hands tightly, so tightly it must be painful, but Scott does not even wince.

“Hey, I’m proud of you, Lydia,” Scott says. “None of us know what’s going on, and you’re still doing so well.”

“But I feel like I could be doing more. Like I _should_ be doing more,” Lydia argues, focusing on their intertwined fingers.

“It’s okay if we don’t know the answers right away, okay?” Scott says gently. “We’ll figure it out.”

“I just want to stop feeling so sick all the time,” Lydia admits in a whisper.

Scott’s thumbs rub circles over Lydia’s skin. “I know,” he says. “I know.”

They sit in silence. Lydia spends the time counting Scott’s breaths, trying to match her own inhales to his slow, steady ones. Scott simply breathes for her and even places her hand against his neck so she can feel his heartbeat. Somewhere in the back of Lydia’s mind, she knows werewolves take this motion as a show of deference and submission, but at the same time, Lydia knows this is Scott, and Scott’s always been too compassionate to abide by any type of uptight hierarchy.

“Do you want to sleep it off?” Scott asks after a couple minutes.

Lydia nods. Rest will probably eliminate the lingering headache and sick feeling that are still in her system. Scott pulls back to allow Lydia to rearrange herself, and he even pulls the sheets up over her.

As soon as he starts to leave, though, Lydia’s throat closes up. She feels like dizzy, and she cannot breathe, and it takes everything she has to choke out his name.

He pauses in the doorway. “Yes?”

“Can you stay?”

Her pulse quickens as the silence drags on, but Scott eventually nods. “Let me just call a couple people, okay? I’ll be right outside your room.”

Lydia nods and closes her eyes, some of the pressure leaving her chest.

She concentrates on the indistinct murmur of Scott’s voice until she hears her bedroom door reopen. She cracks open her eyes to watch Scott strip out of his jacket, take off his socks and shoes, and set his phone on her nightstand. When he finally does crawl under the covers with her, Lydia is nervous all over again. Her nerves are a bit ridiculous – after all, she has had countless other boys and men in her bed before – but this is _Scott_. Scott is something different; he is foreign territory, a complete unknown. But Lydia trusts him, trusts him with her life and then some.

“Your heartbeat has been going crazy,” Scott says with a soft smile.

Lydia flushes, fighting the childish urge to hide under the covers. “Can’t really blame me,” she says instead.

Scott laughs, reaching out a hand to push a strand of her hair away from her face. “Not really,” he says.

A warm feeling of safety floods through Lydia, and she is reminded of just how protected she always feels around Scott. She feels the absence of Scott’s fingers on her face all too sharply, so before she can think about it, Lydia turns over and fits herself into the curve created by Scott’s chest, grabbing his hand to interlock their fingers. Scott makes a noise of surprise, but then settles down, pressing his nose to her hair and inhaling.

“Go to sleep,” he whispers. “I’ll be here.”

* * *

There is a used book store in the town next to Beacon Hills. Lydia has never really frequented the place – she cannot stand pre-annotated books or dogeared-pages – but since her induction into the supernatural world, she has been forced to come here on several research-based occasions.

For some reason, being in the store today is giving Lydia a massive headache. She can hear her pulse in her ears, and any quick movements make her lightheaded. She would head home right now to brew a few herbal teas if she had not already promised Scott to meet him here.

Telling herself to ignore the pain, Lydia meanders down the mythology aisle. The McCall pack’s library is not in need of a particular book at the moment, but Lydia always keeps her eyes peeled from something potentially useful or interesting. She pulls out a volume about Arabian demonology when _it_ suddenly hits her.

The room starts spinning – no, tilting back and forth. The colors are all off, the lights too bright, the shadows too dark, and the color red far more vibrant than usual. A putrid, rotting smell fills her nostril and Lydia fights her reflex to vomit. The book drops from her hands, and Lydia falls to her knees, narrowly missing crashing into the book shelf.

“ _Lydia?_ ”

The voice is simultaneously heard in her ears and in her head. Lydia cannot respond; she is fighting, trying to keep her sense of balance.

“ _Lydia!_ ”

Lydia flares her eyes open with a gasp. Peter’s face is right in front of her, and she scrambles back in shock only for her spine to slam into the shelf. Peter has one hand braced on the shelf next to her head, the other gripping her shoulder tightly.

“What’s wrong?” Peter asks.

“What are you doing here?”

“What’s _wrong?_ ” Peter demands again, shaking her slightly.

“I’m fine!”

“You’re lying.”

Lydia glares at Peter. His face is the perfect countenance of concern, but as Lydia’s senses stabilize, she sense something … off about him. She closes her eyes for a moment, searching for any intangible connection she may have with Peter, but her search is unsuccessful – strangely so, because she can usually sense, at the least, the surface of Peter’s thoughts or feelings.

“I’ll be fine,” Lydia amends.

“You aren’t sure of that.”

“Stop doing that!” Lydia snaps.

Peter smirks. “I can’t help what comes naturally to me. It’s instinctual.”

Lydia stares at him. “It’s creepy and invasive,” she says after a moment. “Now get off.”

Peter snorts and tugs on a string of her hair. The curl bounces back into place, and Peter shifts back onto his heels, allowing Lydia to scramble away and to her feet, leaning more than she would like to admit on the shelf.

“Why are you here?” Lydia asks again.

“Can’t a guy go to a bookshop if he wants to?” Peter asks. His tone is, as always, teasing and borderline flirtatious. Lydia tightens her grip on her purse, pursing her lips against any expression that might try to appear.

“A guy can,” Lydia says. “You can’t.”

“Oh. So … _feisty_.”

“Shut up, Peter.”

Lydia turns back to the shelf, returning the demonology book but keeping an eye on Peter the entire time. He calmly scans the titles of books, hands clasped behind his back. Lydia’s eyes flit over his body, searching for a sign of – anything, really. Something strange, suspicious, incriminating. But she cannot find anything. He is simply Peter, v-neck, designer jeans, frighteningly tranquil demeanor and all.

“I do like the new flowers your mother planted in your hanging pots,” Peter says conversationally.

A chill rolls down Lydia’s spine. She is deeply unsettled, but that is exactly what Peter wants, so Lydia refuses to give him any reaction. “I don’t like them that much,” she says lightly. “I recommended she plant some nordic blue, instead.”

“If I didn’t know you better, Miss Lydia, I’d think you were being cold.”

“I am.”

Peter grins, hedging closer into her space. “But I know just how fiery you can be,” he says. Lydia freezes, her eyes forward, as his fingers brush over her cheek. “Your blush really suits you.”

Her heartbeat rapidly increases, and Peter chuckles, withdrawing slightly. “You would never actually put wolfsbane on your front porch.”

“If it keeps you out,” Lydia says, jaw clenched. _Where the hell is Scott?_

“But then what about the rest of your friends?”

Lydia grabs a book at random. “They’ll have to deal.”

Peter hums thoughtfully. “I didn’t know you were interested in mating.”

Lydia recoils violently. “ _What?_ ”

“Please keep your voice down,” an employ’s voice says from the front of the store.

Peter laughs, and Lydia resists the urge to stomp on his foot. Not that she hesitates to cause him some pain; she just does not want to chance her heels against his boots.

“The book you picked.”

Lydia glances at the title. It is indeed a compilation of myths about the mating of supernatural creatures. She hastily reshelves it and moves on to the next aisle.

Peter follows her, much to her disappointment, though she did not expect anything else of him. “Those stories are highly inaccurate,” he says.

Lydia picks up another book, this time checking the title first – South American origin stories. “You don’t have to tell me anything.”

“They mostly seem to be the ancient people’s outlet for bestiality.”

“Let me rephrase: I _don’t_ want you to tell me anything.”

Peter chuckles. “Lydia, Lydia, Lydia.”

Lydia hates the way Peter says her name. His voice is naturally silky, but when he says her name – it is like he savors each syllable, rolling it around in his mouth, before releasing it. When he speaks her name, Lydia imagines honey, dripping fast and thick and disgustingly sweet from someone’s fist into her throat, and she wants to gag.

“I’d like to look at books alone, so if you would just –”

Peter suddenly stands to attention, eyes focusing on some distant point. His inhales, then scowls irritably.

“What?” Lydia asks.

“Lydia?”

It is Scott, and relief instantly washes through Lydia. Scott approaches the two of them, expression wary, shoulders slightly tense in the way they are when Scott is subconsciously preparing to attack or protect. “What’s going on?” Scott asks.

“Nothing,” Lydia says.

“Hello there, _Alpha_ ,” Peter says, a mocking tone to the title of rank.

“Peter,” Scott says. His voice remains easy, relaxed, but his body language tells another story.

Lydia steps closer to Scott. “Peter was just leaving,” she declares.

“Really?”

“I was,” Peter agrees. “I’ll see you … around.”

He winks at Lydia, gives Scott with a toothy smile, and then leaves.

Blood rushes to Lydia’s head, and she staggers into Scott. “You okay?” he asks, hands reaching out to steady her.

Lydia exhales shakily. “Not feeling the greatest,” she admits.

“What did Peter want?”

“I don’t know.”

Scott stares after the direction Peter left in. “Huh.”

Suddenly it hits her. “Peter’s smile,” she says. “Just now.”

“That was really creepy.”

“No – I mean, yeah, but that’s not it. I think I’ve seen it before.”

Scott raises his eyebrows. “We have known Peter since high school.”

Lydia shakes her head, then immediately regrets it when her temples throb. “I mean, I think that’s the smile the last two victims saw.”

Lydia can feel Scott’s sudden tension. “We can’t trust him.”

“We never did.”

“True,” Scott says. “But we can’t just go after him, either.”

“He’s too smart for that.”

“I was going to say that we don’t have actual proof.”

“That too,” Lydia mutters.

Scott frowns slightly and sniffs the air. “Did he touch you?”

Lydia nods wordlessly. Scott scents the air again, then reaches out and brushes his thumb over her cheek. “Here?” he asks, and Lydia nods in affirmation. Scott brushes over the spot a few times, then bows his head and rubs his cheek against her neck and shoulder as Lydia wraps her arms around his waist.

About a year ago, with alcohol-loosened lips, Lydia had confessed to Scott that she hated Peter touching her. She hated the idea of his skin on hers, of his scent marking her and lingering long after he had gone. Scott had not laughed at her – he told her, in all seriousness, that if Peter ever touched her, Scott would do what he could to erase Peter’s scent. Since that night, Scott has stuck to his word, without ever making a big deal out of it or making her feel uncomfortable.

Scott lifts his head again and tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Good?”

Lydia nods, drawing herself back. “Now we get to spy on Peter.”

“Just keep an eye on him,” Scott says.

“Spy on him.”

* * *

Lydia still does not have a very close relationship with Isaac. Way back in freshman year, she laughed in his face at his attempt to ask her out, and the next year he was trying to kill her because he thought she was the monster that was actually her boyfriend. Junior year, Isaac and Allison were dancing around each other until Allison was no longer around to dance. Since then, Isaac has seen a few therapists and Lydia has grown up a bit, but neither of them have really gotten to know each other.

The current situation, therefore, is a bit odd.

They were supposed to have a pack meeting at the Stilinskis’ house, but when Lydia had arrived, Isaac was sitting with his back against the front door.

“Are you the bouncer?” Lydia asked, quirking an eyebrow.

Isaac held a finger up to his lips. “Stiles and Derek are in there,” he whispered. “They’re arguing.”

“They do that all the time.”

“Yeah. This one’s good.”

So now Lydia is sitting on the Stilinskis’ front porch, crammed into the limited space with a six-foot-plus werewolf.

“What are they even fighting about?” Lydia asks.

“It started as an argument about Stiles keeping wolfsbane in the house,” Isaac said, “But now it’s a huge thing about Derek being over-protective and whether or not they trust each other.”

Lydia snorts. How very typical of them.

A crash resounds from the living room, and Lydia jumps in alarm. “What was that?”

“Not sure – oh. Stiles knocked over a lamp.”

“Of course.”

“Derek’s saying that proves his point, Stiles is a danger to himself. Stiles says – oh, God, he must be pissed.”

“What?”

Isaac grins sheepishly. “Sorry. Forgot. He told Derek shove his judginess up his ass.”

“Sounds like Stiles.”

“And now –”

But Lydia does not even need Isaac to relay it to her, because Stiles and Derek’s voices have risen so much. 

“ _Because I care about you, okay?_ ” Derek’s voice shouts.

“ _I care about you too, asshole!_ ”

“ _Okay!_ ”

“ _Why are you still yelling?_ ”

Their voices lower again, and Lydia bites her lip. She wants to know what they’re saying –

“Stiles just called Derek an idiot again and –”

Suddenly Isaac breaks out into a huge grin and hops to his feet. “Come on!” he urges, tugging on Lydia’s sleeve.

Lydia follows him to the side of the house. Lydia peers inside through the large window and sees –

“ _Finally_ ,” Isaac groans, and Lydia agrees.

Stiles and Derek are standing in the middle of the living room. There is a broken lamp and several bags of chips on the floor, but the main attraction is the two men entangled with each other. Derek has his arms in a vice around Stiles’s waist, Stiles has his hands fisted in Derek’s shirt, and they are kissing each other passionately – or maybe angrily.

“No more meeting, I guess,” Isaac says.

Lydia smirks. “Definitely not.”

They circle back to the front of the house right as Scott and Kira climb off of Scott’s bike. “What’s going on?” Kira asks, straightening her shirt.

“Derek and Stiles,” Isaac says, grinning broadly.

“Dude! Seriously?” Scott shouts.

“What?” Kira asks.

“Derek and Stiles have finally caved to their _feelings_ and are currently making out like a couple of teenagers,” Lydia explains.

Scott bursts out laughing, and Kira looks momentarily surprised before also grinning.

“Isaac and I think we shouldn’t bother trying to meet today,” Lydia continues.

“Yeah,” Scott says. “Just gimme a sec.”

They watch as Scott saunters up to the front door. He pulls it open, sticks his head in, and calls out, “Congratulations! Don’t forget to use a condom!”

Stiles’s voice faintly reaches the front lawn. “ _Fuck you, Scotty!_ ”

A pillow flies at Scott’s head, and he laughs loudly, shutting the door and returning to the driveway. “You guys want to grab some pizza?” he asks, still grinning ridiculously widely.

“Sounds good,” Isaac says.

“I’ll tell Danny the change of plans,” Lydia says.

When Lydia climbs into her car, she cannot stop a laugh from bursting out of her chest. Smiling to herself, she turns up whatever bright pop song is on the radio, and she sings along – rather poorly – the entire drive to the pizza place.

* * *

For the Fourth of July, the pack has a cookout at Melissa McCall’s. In addition to the pack are friends – supernatural and non-supernatural – that they have made over the years. Peter is not there, and his absence significantly lifts Lydia’s spirits.

Lydia sits at a picnic table, nursing a glass of water. She is entertaining herself by watching Stiles and Derek interact with a hyperactive group of Scott’s younger neighbors when Kira takes the seat next to Lydia.

“Hey there,” Kira says brightly.

“Hi,” Lydia replies.

Kira licks her fingers. “Mm, have you tried any of the cookies? They’re amazing.”

“Not yet.”

Kira nods. Her feet start tapping to the beat of the music being pumped through a rickety old stereo, and Lydia resists the urge to physically stop Kira from moving. Kira’s hyperactivity can get nearly as bad as Stiles’s, though hers generally depends on how playful her fox is feeling.

“Kira?”

“Yeah?”

“What happened with you and Scott?”

It is a subject that has never come up between them before, and Kira’s surprise is evident, but she stays relaxed. “It just wasn’t the right time, I think,” she surmises. “I mean, when I first moved here I was so sure I wouldn’t have a boyfriend or anything. Scott was a bit of a surprise, and a nice surprise, you know? So I went along with it.

“But then Allison” – Kira glances nervously at Lydia, as she always does whenever she mentions Allison to anyone – “her death was … a lot, for Scott. We drifted apart, and eventually I started seeing Reed. Remember Reed?” 

Lydia smiles. Reed was an interesting character. “I remember.”

Kira laughs, shaking her head and sighing. “Anyway … Scott and I, we just drifted. But it was mutual, not-unpleasant drifting.”

Lydia nods, lacing her fingers together.

“He cares about you, you know,” Kira says.

“Of course he does,” Lydia says with feigned haughtiness. “I’m part of his pack.”

“Do you _like_ him?” Kira teases, wriggling in her seat and shouldering Lydia.

“Please,” Lydia says with another eye roll.

Kira holds up her hands in surrender. “Okay! Whatever you say, Queen of Screams.”

Lydia laughs. “How about you? I haven’t heard much about _your_ romantic antics.” She elbows Kira’s side and Kira flinches away, giggling. For a sword-wielding supernatural fox, she sure is ticklish. 

“You haven’t heard anything because there are none,” Kira grouses melodramatically.

“Really? My sources say there’s a boy named Kenny in your history class, and he’s so _smart_ and _gorgeous_ –”

“Sources?” Kira’s eyes narrow. “Danny Mahealani!” she suddenly shouts across the yard, and Danny looks over to them.

“What’s up?”

“You’re a traitor!”

Lydia laughs when Danny immediately reverts to the sad-puppy face he has had since elementary school. “You can’t entirely blame him,” Lydia tells Kira. “I find ways to be _highly_ persuasive.”

“Or Danny’s just a total gossip.”

The girls fall into laughter. Scott ambles up to them, his knees dirty and hair a mess. “What’s so funny?” he asks.

“Danny is a gossip,” Kira replies.

“Hey, be nice to Danny. Everyone likes Danny.”

Lydia snorts, and Scott turns to her. “Want to test out the hammock?”

She lifts an eyebrow. “Is that why you’re covered in dirt?”

Scott grins self-deprecatingly. “Isaac and I did not realize how hard it was to assemble a hammock.”

Kira stands up. “You should go,” she tells Lydia. “I was just going to head over and rescue Stiles and Derek.” She touches Lydia’s arm, zapping her slightly, and winks before bounding towards the pile of bodies that Stiles, Derek, and the neighborhood kids have become.

Scott bows and raises an eyebrow. “My lady?”

Lydia rolls her eyes fondly and takes his offered arm.

The hammock is between two trees on the edge of the McCalls’ yard, about a hundred feet away from the woods that eventually bleed into the reserve. Scott presents Lydia with the hammock, and she huffs before cautiously sitting down on it. It does not flip over, so she allows Scott to join her, and they swing back and forth lightly, watching the party in front of them.

“I’m not sure how I feel about Fourth of July,” Scott says.

“Do you have something against the holiday?”

“No! It just means that summer is halfway over.”

“Which means we still have half left.”

Scott’s eyes focus on her. “True.”

They hold eye contact for four, five seconds before Lydia averts her gaze, cheeks flushing with the intensity of Scott’s … _everything_. “I won’t mind going back to school.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Beacon Hills gets … stifling, after a while.”

Scott frowns. “Does it?”

Lydia shrugs. “I always thought I would leave it as soon as possible.” She smiles, reminiscing. “I wanted to go to the East Coast. New York, or Boston.”

“Will you move away after college?”

Lydia hesitates. “I’m not sure,” she eventually admits. “For grad school, maybe.  But …” She glances at Scott. “There are people here, now.”

His face brightens, and Lydia fights the urge to pinch his cheeks. Sighing heavily, he leans back and puts an arm around her. “I, on the other hand, really don’t want to go back to school.”

“Why not?”

He gives her his signature _you-are-missing-the-obvious_ look. “I never get to see you.”

“Scott, you visit so often people at my school _know_ you.”

“Doesn’t mean I still miss you. Or Stiles.”

Stiles is hastily added on, and something warm fills Lydia’s gut. Her mind flits to Kira, from just a few minutes ago, and the echo of her words: “ _Do you_ like _him?_ ”

Oh, God. Lydia totally does.

“Everything okay?” Scott asks, tapping her hand lightly.

“Yeah, fine,” Lydia says, forcibly dragging herself out of her epiphany and back to the present.

“Your heart just sped up like crazy.”

“You werewolves and your senses,” Lydia complains, whacking Scott’s chest, “You have a really unfair advantage, you know.”

“I’m pretty sure we still have nothing on you,” Scott replies, cheeks dimpling.

Lydia arches an eyebrow. “Do go on.”

Scott laughs. “You’re still smarter than all of us put together,” he says. “You’re strong. Independent. Cunning. Still a bit terrifying.” He buries his nose in her hair. “Your hair smells nice.”

Lydia laughs, trying to squirm away, but Scott has his arms around her. She gives up, letting herself fall against him.

“You’re not half bad yourself,” she says up to the leaves and the fading sun.

“Thanks,” Scott replies dryly.

“You’re loyal. Compassionate. Dependable.”

Scott snorts, sending a few strands of Lydia’s hair flying. “Stiles would argue about that.”

“Stiles is wrong,” Lydia says confidently.

“He won’t like hearing that.”

“Whatever. He can complain to Derek now.”

Scott chuckles, and they lapse into silence. The sky is turning yellow above them, the barest hints of orange and pink streaking into the blend. A breeze dances along the air, and Lydia feels a slight chill, but Scott is a warm presence beside her.

“I want to lie down,” Lydia says.

“Okay.”

Lydia stands up, and Scott tries to swing his legs onto the netting, but the hammock suddenly swings too far. Lydia jumps back; Scott’s eyes flare wide and he grabs the hammock, but he is helpless to the laws of physics. He yelps, and the hammock deposits him on the ground with a loud thump.

He groans, and Lydia crouches slightly. “Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yeah.” He frowns when he cannot pull his left arm down. Lydia tries to smother her giggles, and embarrassment spreads over Scott’s face. “My claws are stuck.”

She cannot help it; she bursts out laughing. “They are.”

He gives her big, beseeching brown eyes. “Can you help?”

“No, I think I’ll just leave you there.”

“Lydia!”

“Oh, _fine_.”

In a minute Lydia has detached Scott’s claws from the ropes. He gets on the hammock again, more slowly this time, and once he is settled, Lydia joins him, snuggling into his chest. He carefully wraps his arms around her, and Lydia takes one of his hands, twisting their fingers together.

“Waxing gibbous,” Lydia says, looking at the sky.

Scott murmurs in agreement, brushing his thumb over the back of Lydia’s palm.

“Do you know any constellations?” Lydia asks.

“No, I don’t.”

“I’ll teach you some.”

“The stars aren’t out.”

“We can wait for them.”

* * *

A few mornings later Lydia wakes up to the sound of rain on her bedroom window. She sits up, blearily rubbing her eyes, and extends her arms up and back until her shoulders give a satisfying pop. Sighing contentedly, she goes downstairs.

Instead of the kitchen, Lydia finds herself outside, just under the protection of the porch in her backyard. She watches the dancing pattern of raindrops on pool water for a moment before venturing into the downpour herself.

The wet stone slabs beneath her feet quickly turn to mud that squishes between her toes. Lydia watches the oozing brown sludge, hopping every now and then to avoid a pale, wriggling worm that slides through the mire. Within a couple minutes she is in the forest.

There is an exquisite beauty to the forest in this weather; it smells clean and fresh, the colors muted by the gray sky and thin fog. The water makes everything shine, and Lydia shakes the occasional low-hanging branch just to see the water droplets shower down.

 _Lydia_.

Lydia whips her head up. She searches the landscape to see a young boy standing fifty feet away from her. He does not look like the voice belongs to him, and Lydia tilts her head curiously. The child has dark hair and blue eyes. He parts his lips and says:

“Lydia?”

Goosebumps instantly rise on Lydia’s skin. “This isn’t …”

“Lydia. Follow me.”

It has been years since Lydia first saw this place, but she suddenly knows that this is not her world; this is not even her head. This is Peter, this is Peter intruding on her mind and forcing her to go somewhere –

“No,” Lydia says.

The child – a young, young Peter – reaches out his hand. “Lydia, please –”

“No!”

Lydia turns and sprints, but she has not even made it five feet before she is tackled to the ground. She shrieks and thrashes, but she is helpless; the other person is stronger than her, and she is forced onto her back so she can look up at her attacker.

It is the Peter, the Peter she knows, but his eyes are red and his fangs are out. “Lydia,” he growls, and the lisp caused by the fangs would be amusing if Peter was not so fucking _terrifying_.

Lydia begins to struggle again, and Peter wrestles to pin her down. He is having difficulty, though, so instead, he opens his mouth and –

“ _LYYYYDDDIIIAAAA!_ ”

Lydia freezes, a primal, animal fear rendering her incapable of moving. Peter is predator; she is prey. Tears well up in her eyes but do not fall.

Peter traps her wrists and leans in close, breathing hotly on Lydia’s chin and throat. “You cannot struggle,” he whispers. 

Lydia whimpers, and Peter tightens his grip on her wrists until she fears her bones might snap. “You cannot fight,” Peter continues. “You will do exactly as I want you to do.”

Lydia nods mutely. The most she can pray for is to let this illusion play out until reality returns, and when it does, she will fight, she will scream, she will do something, _anything_ before she lets Peter do anything to her.

“Good.”

Peter stands up and forces Lydia to walk in front of him, his claws resting against her throat. They head deeper into the woods, and it is no longer beautiful; the silver fog has disappeared, and the gray of the sky has turned darker, more sinister. With Peter literally at her throat, Lydia cannot watch the ground, and she feels strange, disgusting substances against the bare soles of her feet. She swears the worms are starting to curl around her ankles and toes.

Eventually Peter stops her. One of his claws nicks her throat, and Lydia curls her fists against the feeling of blood slipping down her neck and to her clavicle.

“Now,” Peter says, lips brushing against her ear. “ _Close your eyes_.”

Vertigo slams into Lydia so violently she loses track of her sense of self. She feels like vomiting, so she does, turning her head to the side.

Lydia gasps for air. Her senses begin reorient. It is still raining; the drops are cold against her skin. She is sitting down, the ground beneath her solid and rough, and her back rests against something equally hard. She wonders if this is reality, if she should try to draw out a scream, when she hears Peter.

“Open your eyes.”

She does, and suddenly everything makes sense.

 _Eyes_ – 

 _Fangs_ – 

 _Smile_ –

 _He’s creepy_ – 

_What – what are his eyes doing?_

_He’s not human_ –

Looking into his eyes, his bright blue wolf eyes, Lydia is slammed by every awful feeling she has had in the last five months. The nausea, the instability, the feeling that she was balancing on the brink of insanity – it is all there, painted plain as day across Peter’s face and swimming in his eyes.

“I knew you’d figure it out,” Peter says, smiling proudly.

Lydia twists to the side and heaves, but she cannot throw up anything but spit and bile. Peter frowns, watching her hack, and reaches out to run a clawed finger over her forehead. “Shame,” he murmurs. “I thought you were stronger than this.”

Anger sparks in her. “What do you expect?” she shouts. “You’ve been living inside my fucking _head!_ ” 

Peter shakes his head disappointedly. “Wolves and banshees have had connections like this before,” he says. “They were special connections, but strong, and the wolf and the banshee benefitted greatly from each other.” 

Lydia falls back against the wall, through with trying to vomit. _Alleyway_ , she dimly recognizes. She is in an alleyway. Adrenaline pumps through her veins, yet she feels so sluggish.

Peter narrows his eyes at her in scrutiny. “I thought, given how special you were, forging this connection would not be beyond the limits of your strength.” He scrunches his nose. “Guess I was wrong.”

“Why do you have to blame my strength?” Lydia challenges. “Why couldn’t it be because you’re a lunatic?”

Peter growls, his fangs out in an instant. “I’m not a lunatic!”

“You look pretty fucking insane right now.”

Peter shouts and strikes her across the face. Lydia’s head whips around, and she is instantly dizzy. Two pulses begin to thunder in her ears; one is hers, and the other, she realizes, must be Peter’s.

Suddenly she is sick and tired of all of this. “What do you want, Peter?”

“Many things, Lydia.” He reaches out and caresses her jaw; Lydia shuts her eyes, and Peter hisses. “Eyes open.”

“No.”

“ _Open_.”

His claw slices into the skin underneath her jaw, and Lydia gasps, her eyes flying open. He stares into them, and Lydia tries to focus on the rain on her skin, the wet pavement beneath her fingers, anything but Peter and her pain and the battling pulses in her head, but she is unsuccessful.

“You didn’t have quite the same eyes as her,” Peter murmurs.

“Who?” Lydia cannot help asking.

“Red hair, though.” Peter grabs a fistful of Lydia’s hair, brings it up to his nose and inhales. “You both had red hair.”

It is the second time Peter has referred to her in the past tense. “What are you going to do to me?” she asks.

Peter raises his eyebrows. “I think you know the answer to that question.”

“Why, then?”

“So I can kill Scott.”

“What?”

Peter sighs. “Don’t make me monologue, Lydia. It’s so terribly cliché.”

Suddenly Peter rips through the fabric of her shirt. Lydia gasps when the chilly air meets the skin of her chest. Tears begin to fall down her cheeks, mingling with the rain.  Peter places a single claw at the top of her sternum, only a few inches from the gore of her bra. He does not apply any pressure, leaving the skin unpierced, and with his other hand, he tilts Lydia’s chin so he can look into her eyes.

“Scream for me, love.”

He shifts, and Lydia’s mind shreds to pieces.

It is though she and Peter have become one. His madness is her madness, her pain is his pain, but instead of frightening him, her pain excites him, makes the feral animal within him slaver and howl with joy. There are screams, and Lydia does not know if they are hers, Peter’s, or a great cacophony of all the voices she has ever heard, the shrieks and wails of a hundred thousand dying creatures. Lydia is vaguely aware of tears burning her eyes, of pain biting into her torso, of Peter sitting on her legs, but she is mostly concerned with the feeling that her head is going to _explode_. Lydia gasps for breath, thinking nothing more than _Death, please come, I want to die, let me die let me die letmedieletmedieLETMEDIE_ –

Underneath it all are the battling pulses of her and Peter, both rapid, both trying to beat louder than the other. They beat frantically, erratically, when suddenly –

They are joined by a third –

A forth –

A fifth –

A sixth –

The weight of Peter on her legs is suddenly ripped away, and with it the skin of her stomach is torn. Lydia howls – or maybe it is Peter – or maybe it is one of the others, because there are other now – others –

“ _Lydia_.”

 _No!_ Lydia thinks. _Leave me alone, get out, get out, leave me_ –

“ _Lydia, my love_ –”

 _Go away, Peter_ –

“ _My love, my precious love_ –”

_LEAVE ME OR KILL ME, PETER! LEAVE ME OR KILL ME! JUST KILL ME!_

“ _LYDIA!_ ”

There is a hundredth of a second of silence; no pulse beats, no voice screams, and it is silent in Lydia’s head. 

The silence shatters her.

She screams, and 

Everything–

Is –

Gone.

.

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* * *

There is a white room. It is long and brightly lit. Rectangular columns rise from the gray and white floor in regular intervals. There are no entrances and no exits.

It is vaguely recognizable. Last time, there was a large tree stump in the center. Now there is nothing.

There is also nothing to do but wait.

\----------

“Mom! Is she going to be okay? Is she going to be fine?”

“Honey, you can’t be in here right now –”

“I have him, Melissa.”

“Mom! _Mom!_ Don’t make me leave, I need to _know_ –”

\----------

There is a quiet forest. Its silence is eerie, but thin strips of fog weave between the trees, and the fog is silver. A nice fog. It is daylight, and daylight is always a comfort.

There is a large rock covered with patches of moss. It is a nice place to sit; the sun shines on it, so it is warm, like a tender embrace from Mother Nature.

So sit. Close your eyes. You will find your way soon enough.

\----------

“She’s survived before.”

“I know, but – God, Derek, did you see what she looked like? He – he _tore_ her.”

“Melissa made sure she had the best doctors, and Deaton is –”

“But what if isn’t enough? What if he didn’t just hurt her physically, but also mentally?”

“It’s possible –”

“It’s possible! And I’m – I’m – God. I’m crying.”

“Hey, hey.”

“Thanks. I …”

“It’s okay.”

“Are … are you okay? About …?”

“Killing my uncle? He wasn’t really my uncle. Not at the end.”

“You can tell me if – you know, if you feel differently.”

“I don’t. But if I did, I would.”

“Okay. Okay.”

\----------

“You’re still here?”

“Wha – Kira?”

“Did you go home last night?”

“No. Wanted to be here if anything happened.”

“Scott…”

“I know. I know. Coma of unknown length and severity.”

“No. I was just going to ask …”

“What?”

“You really love her.”

“Was that a question?”

“Not really.”

“Well. Yeah. I do.”

“Go home and take a shower, get some sleep. I’ll tell you if anything happens.”

“But…”

“Go. Seriously, you reek, and I don’t even have a wolf nose.”

“All right.”

\----------

There is a white room. It is long and brightly lit. Rectangular columns rise from the gray and white floor in regular intervals. There are no entrances and no exits. 

Flowers cover the floor, delicate and beautiful white lilies. In the center of the room, sitting on the bed of flowers, is a girl with curly brown hair.

You find the strength to stand and go to her.

* * *

Lydia carefully rises to her feet. Her knees are shaky, and she spends a minute or two just standing, making sure she can support herself. Then she begins to shuffle forward, because there is a young woman sitting in the center of the flowers, and Lydia needs to talk to her.

When Lydia is ten feet from the woman, she stops. She hesitates, then calls out:

“Allison?”

The woman turns, and Lydia’s heart stops.

In a moment they run to each other and slam into each other, each gripping the other girl tightly. Tears leak from Lydia’s eyes as she feels what she thought she would never feel again: Allison, warm and alive, in her arms.

“Lydia,” Allison breathes out, and it sounds a bit like a laugh.

“Oh, my God,” Lydia says, and that is all she can say for a while.

They sink into the bed of flowers, still holding each other tightly. Allison rubs Lydia’s back until Lydia stops crying and composes herself enough to pull back from Allison. “Where is this place?” Lydia asks.

“Someplace in between,” Allison says. “And that is as specific as it gets.”

Lydia huffs. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

Allison smiles wryly. “Well, I am.” Her smile drops. “But you.”

Lydia frowns. “Why am I here?’

“Do you remember anything?” Allison asks gently.

She remembers Peter. Growling, screaming, howling, pain. But it is all strangely muted and dreamlike. “It’s all … vague,” she tells Allison.

Allison nods. “It’s a miracle you’re still fighting.”

Lydia stiffens. “Still fighting?”

“No! Not like that. Peter is dead. You’re in the hospital.”

“I’m here.”

Allison smiles gently. “You’re here and there.”

Lydia deliberates for a moment. “This is my head.”

Allison nods.

“Have you been here this whole time?”

Allison shakes her head. “I’ve been elsewhere. But you needed a visit.”

Lydia considers asking Allison about elsewhere, but then decides against it. There are some things even she does not want to know about quite yet. “What’s the visit for?”

“To help you decide.” Allison takes Lydia’s hand. “Like I said, you’re still fighting. You’re stuck in between; you can fall either way right now.”

“Either to elsewhere … or back.”

Allison nods again, her smile gentle and supportive.

Lydia bites her lip and stares at the flowers. She misses Allison. How easy it would be to take Allison’s hand and just follow her to elsewhere, follow her away from earthly pain and strife. But she hesitates.

“Peter is really dead?” she asks.

Allison nods. “Dead and burned to ashes.”

Peter gone. Another in the ever-growing list of dead and gone people that Lydia once knew.

“You have reasons to go back,” Allison tells her, nudging Lydia’s shoulder.

Lydia looks up at her friend. “Are you trying to convince me to go back?”

Allison nods. “You have an entire life ahead of you, Lydia.”

“But –”

“You can’t let a few ghosts stop you from living.”

“You’re not a ghost,” Lydia says, tears welling up in her eyes.

Allison smiles sadly. “I’m no longer part of that place.” She squeezes Lydia’s hand. “It’s okay to let go.”

Lydia’s tears fall, and Allison draws her close to her chest, petting her hair. “Oh, Lydia,” she whispers, and her voice is also watery.

“I miss you so damn much,” Lydia confesses, gripping tightly to her friend.

“I miss you too,” Allison replies. “But I’ll be here forever. You? You still have time left. When you get here, then we’ll have forever.” Lydia does not respond, so Allison pushes on. “You have college to finish, a Fields prize to win. You have your mother, your pack. You have Scott.”

“Is it worth it?”

“Scott? Of course he is.”

Lydia cannot help laughing a bit. “No. I mean … all of it.”

Allison pushes Lydia back so she can look her in the eye. “It is always worth it,” Allison says. “You only get one true life, with a real birth and a real death, and everything between those two moments is absolutely, inarguably worth it.”

Lydia searches her friend’s face, and when she only finds complete earnestness, she laughs breathlessly and wipes her tears. “Okay,” she says.

“Okay?”

“I’m going back.”

“That’s my girl.”

Allison picks up two of the lilies. She tucks one behind Lydia’s ear, the other behind her own. “Go back there and kick some ass, okay?” Allison says.

Lydia smiles wryly. “Of course.”

They embrace one last time. “Shut your eyes,” Allison whispers, and Lydia does.

She begins her journey back.

* * *

When she opens her eyes, it takes a second for the ceiling to come into focus. Lydia blinks rapidly. There is an itch on the back of her neck, but when she tries to scratch it, her arm stops short. Lydia looks at it and sees she is attached to an IV.

“Ow,” she says belatedly.

“Lydia!”

Lydia jumps. Stiles leaps up from the corner of the room and comes to her bedside. “Lydia?” he asks breathlessly.

“Calm down, Stilinski,” she says. Her voice is rough and guttural, like she has screamed too much or has not been using it enough. Both of which is probably true, now that she thinks about it.

“Thank _God_ ,” Stiles says.

Derek lumbers over to the foot of her bed. “Glad to see you awake.”

Lydia smiles hesitantly at him, and to her surprise, he offers a small grin back. “Thanks,” she says, and she means it for more than his comment; she wants to thank Derek for being there, for Scott and Stiles and the pack, for taking care of Peter, which she just knows, for some reason, he did.

Derek nods at her, and Stiles suddenly jumps. “Shit! I should get Scott –”

“I’ll get him,” Derek offers.

He leaves, and Stiles turns back to Lydia. “How are you feeling?” he asks. “Do you need anything? Water? Food? I don’t know if you’re allowed to have food yet. Blanket? Or –”

“I’m fine, Stiles,” Lydia says.

“You scared me to death, Lydia.”

“What happened?”

Stiles swallows. “Derek and I were at Scott’s house with Isaac,” he says. “And Scott suddenly heard you screaming. Derek couldn’t hear you, at first, and neither could Isaac, but Scott insisted, so we left. And eventually Derek and Isaac also heard you, and Derek heard Peter’s heartbeat, and it didn’t take much to put two and two together…” Stiles chokes up, and he hastily scrubs a hand over his eyes.

“How was I?” Lydia asks.

“Bloody,” Stiles says.

“I know _that_ much.”

“You didn’t have any broken bones, but there was blood loss and tissue damage with some internal bleeding.”

Lydia frowns. “I should have died.”

Stiles chokes on a laugh. “The doctors had no idea how you managed to survive. Melissa had to keep them from asking too many questions.” He sobers up. “Deaton came by, did some of his strange emissary magic stuff. It helped a lot.”

The door to her room bursts open. Scott is there, expression wild and clothing rumpled. “Lydia?”

“Scott –”

For a second it seems like he is going to leap onto the cot with her, but at the last minute he holds back and settles for gripping her hand tightly. “God,” he say, eyes shining, “You scared me _so much_ , I thought you might not –”

“She’s okay, Scott,” Stiles says, reaching across to pat Scott’s hand consolingly.

“I’m okay,” Lydia says.

She is content to just drink Scott in, scrutinizing every detail about him. His hair and clothes are rumpled and unkempt, and his skin has an unusual pallor. His hands, though warm, are shaking, and she squeezes his hand reassuringly.

“I’m okay,” she repeats, and Scott shakes his head with a relieved smile, bringing their joint hands up to his lips.

“You’re okay.”

* * *

Recovery is a slow process. It is August by the time Lydia can be physically active again for more than two hours without needing a break. Luckily, her recovery time coincides with a period of relative calm in Beacon Hills, so she does not go traipsing for miles around town in her sleep. Her nightmares are also muted and less frequent; if she ever wakes in the middle of the night, it does not take too much to drift back to sleep, which is good for her healing body.

The pack visits her constantly, Scott and Stiles most of all. Lydia’s mother makes jokes about all her _new suitors_ , and Lydia rolls her eyes, reminding her, “They’re my _friends_ , Mom.”

“Oh, sure. Keep telling me that.”

“Mom, you know Stiles is dating –”

“That other one is single, though.”

“ _Mom!_ ”

Sometimes the pack will take Lydia out of the house. Stiles and Derek bring her to a museum a few towns over. One night, Danny treats her to dinner at Beacon Hills’s new French restaurant; Kira and Isaac take her to grab ice cream on one particularly hot day. Most frequent is Scott: he takes her all over town or just spends the day at her house with her. They go on walks through the woods, holding hands and talking.

It is on one of these walks Lydia starts to really wonder where they are. Whatever is progressing between her and Scott, it is moving slowly – extraordinarily slowly, compared to all of Lydia’s past relationships. The entire fiasco with Peter undoubtedly has to do with it; there was the chaos of dealing with Peter, and then, with Lydia healing, Scott has been extremely gentle and cautious with her.

But Lydia feels infinitely better now, so what is stopping her from doing anything?

“My mother has been talking about starting her garden again for years,” Scott is saying, “And I have a bunch of free time left this sumer, so I thought I could start finding some flowers. It’s been a while, but I think I could recognize most of them on sight –”

“Scott?”

He pauses in his rambling and looks down at her. “Yeah?”

They stop walking. Lydia inhales, steadying herself, then rises on her toes and kisses him.

Scott makes a small noise of surprise but immediately returns Lydia’s kiss. Warmth blossoms in her chest, filling her entire being, and she reaches up to wrap her arms around his neck. His skin there is soft, as is the well-worn material of his shirt that brushes against her arms. Scott has one hand in her hair and the other on her lower back, and Lydia feels as though she could stay like this forever.

When they part they are both left more than a little breathless. Lydia stares into Scott’s eyes, shocked into wordlessness by the torrent of emotions battling within her heart. _Love_ , she realizes, _this is the chaos of love_. And she laughs, brightly and loudly, and Scott joins her, bowing his head to press their foreheads together.

“Wow,” Scott says, grinning uncontrollably, and Lydia giggles.

“Wow,” she agrees, and Scott ducks down to kiss her again.

* * *

 

Derek Hale has never looked more out of place than he does right now, standing in Lydia’s bedroom.

“You can take a seat,” Lydia says after the silence has dragged on for a good two minutes.

Derek does so, perching on the edge of her couch. Lydia looks up from her textbook, waiting for him to say something.

“I’m sorry about what my uncle did to you.”

Irritation flares within Lydia. “Did you come here just to apologize for him?”

Derek flinches. “No,” he says. “I have some possible explanations, though. If you want to hear them.”

Lydia closes her book and sets it aside. “Explanations?”

Derek nods. “More like … theories. For what caused Peter to do what he did.”

“Go on.”

Derek rests his elbows on his knees. “Peter’s recovery after the fire was miraculous. Neither Laura nor I expected him to ever be mentally alert again, so we left him here when we moved to New York. The healing of born wolves is better than a bitten wolf’s, but Peter’s healing – something like that requires extremely strong motivation.

“My guess is he became fixated on revenge. Before I even knew he was shifting and running around Beacon Hills, he already killed two of the people involved in the fire, and he was the one who eventually killed Kate. Revenge was the basis on which he brought himself back to the conscious world, and once he achieved his revenge … he was left purposeless.”

“But he decided to stick around anyway,” Lydia says.

Derek nods. “The way he was after the fire … his morals became twisted because he was driven by revenge, bloodlust, rage. He was power hungry. Which is why he did so much bad in the past few years. He manipulated us, tried to land us in places that would result in his power gain, mainly to become an alpha again, I think. But Scott’s pack managed to get around him every time.”

“It’s your pack too, you know.”

Derek glances at her but does not pursue the subject. “I’m sure you started sensing Peter’s deteriorating state, at some point.”

Now that she has had some time to think about the events of the past few months, Lydia has realized that she _had_ felt Peter crumbling. The instability, the madness hedging in on her own thoughts – it was all Peter. She nods and tells Derek, “I didn’t realize it for what it was, right away.”

“None of us did,” he immediately replies. “You can’t blame yourself.”

“You can’t blame yourself, either.”

Derek snorts. “You sound like Stiles.”

“Sometimes, Stiles can be right.”

“Whatever the case,” Derek says, “Peter wanted to be an alpha again, so he targeted Scott.”

“Through me.”

“Yes.” Derek clasps his hand together. “Stiles and I went to Peter’s apartment a few days ago. We found a bunch of research there, several of which were spells about increasing power. One of them required the sacrifice of a harbinger of death, and then, on the full moon –”

“The person would become more powerful.”

“Yeah.” Derek clears his throat. “Stiles and I thought Peter planned on going after Scott right after he finished –” Derek cuts off and casts his eyes to the ground.

Lydia takes a deep breath to steady herself. “Thank you,” she says, “for telling all of this to me.”

“It was the least I could do.”

“I have a question.”

“I’ll try to answer it.”

Lydia drags her blanket into her lap, fisting the soft fabric in her hands. “Peter … Peter kept calling me 'my love.’ Do you know why?’

Derek shakes his head. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

The silence falls again. Lydia ties knots in the fringe of the blanket. Eventually she looks up and says, “Sorry, but – can I be alone, for a bit?”

Derek nods. “Of course.” He pauses at the door, though, head tilted. “Scott just pulled up. Do you want me to tell him to go?”

Lydia shakes her head. “It’s okay. I’ll talk to him myself.”

Derek stares at her inquisitively for a moment, then gives her the barest hint of a smile before leaving.

Scott appears not a minute later. “What was Derek doing here?”

Lydia shrugs. “Just. Explained some things.”

“He and Stiles have been thinking a lot.”

“Yeah. It was helpful.”

Scott comes over to crouch in front of her. “Are you okay?”

“I will be.”

Scott presses a kiss to the back of her hand. “Need to talk?”

“Not now.”

“Okay.”

And this is what she loves about Scott. He never forces her to do anything she does not want to; Lydia knows he will stand by her and support her with whatever she attempts to do.

Lydia slips off the bed and joins Scott on the floor, wrapping herself around him as well as she can. Scott envelops her in his own embrace, and Lydia shuts her eyes, losing herself to the feeling of Scott’s hand making slow circles up and down her back, a comforting touch that grounds her while her thoughts are spinning crazily.

* * *

Lydia parks the car and exhales loudly, then looks over at Scott. “You ready for this?” she asks, taking his hand.

He squeezes her fingers. “I think so.” He looks nervous, and Lydia rolls her eyes fondly.

“Just talk to her,” she says. “She’ll appreciate it.”

Scott’s brows lower with determination. “Okay,” he says. “I’m going.” 

“I’ll join you in a minute.”

He nods, squeezing Lydia’s hand one last time before grabbing his bouquet of flowers and climbing out of the car.

Lydia watches him climb up the hill. The graveyard is blessedly quiet today; the voices that usual clamor for Lydia’s attention are still present, but they are merely background noise, and Lydia can easily tune them out.

Scott disappears over the crest of one hill, and Lydia sinks back into her seat. She glances at her own bouquet of flowers, a combination of white carnations and white lilies, and she smiles sadly. “Be kind to him,” Lydia says to the air.

After a good ten minutes Lydia herself gets out of the car. She follows the path Scott took, and when she finds him, he is kneeling before Allison’s gravestone.

“Remember that day we skipped school together? Sophomore year?” Scott says. “We found that one patch of wild flowers, the purple ones. And – I’m helping my mom restart her garden this summer. So I went back, got some of those flowers –” he laughs. “You’ll never guess. Or maybe you would. You probably know more about flowers than I do. But they were – get this – violet lupines. Lupine? Wolves? You know?” 

Lydia puts a hand on Scott’s shoulder, and he jumps slightly. “Hey,” he says. His eyes are a bit wet, but he still gives her a small smile.

“Hey.”

Lydia sets her flowers down next to Scott’s lilacs and sits next to him. “Hi, Allison,” she says softly, brushing the huntress’s name inscribed on the stone.

“Lydia and I are together now,” Scott says hesitantly, and Lydia nods encouragingly.

“We miss you,” he continues. “All of us do. There isn’t a day that goes by in which someone in the pack doesn’t think of you.”

“Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing right now,” Lydia says, “I hope you’re kicking some ass.”

Scott puts his arm around Lydia’s shoulder. “I hope you’re happy,” he adds to Lydia’s comment.

Suddenly he stiffens. Lydia looks at him with concern. “What?”

He looks confused, but his body slowly relaxes. “Nothing,” he says. “I just – for a second, it smelled like her. Like Allison.”

Lydia looks at the sky. It is a windy day for late summer, but the breeze is refreshing. Soon the leaves will start changing; the days will grow shorter and nights longer, and the pack will be separated until winter break. But Beacon Hills will still be here, a place where they will always return to, and waiting here will be this grave on the top of a grassy hill, keeping a vigilant watch over the town.

“I think she’s here,” Lydia says to Scott. “She’s always watching over us.”

Scott rests his chin on Lydia’s shoulder. “If you can hear me, Allison,” he says softly, “I miss you. And I’ll never forget you, or anything you’ve done for us.”

 _We love you, Allison_ , Lydia thinks, and she swears she can hear Allison’s voice, calling from that elsewhere, somewhere beyond the grave:

 _I love you too_.

* * *

 _Just keep following / The heartlines on your hand / Just keep following / The heartlines on your hand / Keep it up / I know you can! / Just keep following / The heartlines on your hand!_ \- Heartlines, Florence + The Machine

 

 

 


End file.
